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Social Sciences 174. Coping with International Conflict

Roger Fisher

Concerned with bridging the gap between theory and practice. International concerns, such as South Africa, the Middle East, hunger, human rights, and nuclear proliferation, are analyzed in terms of partisan and specialized perceptions; of when to use self-help, exert influence, or engage in education; of those officials, journalists, businessmen, or others who might make a difference; of the choices they now perceive; and of ways to change those choices in order to reduce the costs of conflict, to promote one's view of justice, or both. Seeks to develop skills for deciding who should do what tomorrow morning, and for making constructive action more likely.

Note: May be used by government concentrators to meet their concentration requirements.

Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 10, and one additional meeting at hours to be arranged. 3158 (XII)

ABOVE is a course description from the Harvard University Course Catalogue. Pretty boring, isn't it? What's worse, it's not really all that informative. After all, it is only what the professor thinks his course is supposed to teach, no more and usually a lot less.

On the right, however, is a page from the Crimson's Confidential Guide to Courses at Harvard-Radcliffe for 1979-1980. As you can see, it's a bit more interesting than the course catalogue, and a lot more informative. The Confi Guide tells you what a course is about, how well it is taught, how difficult it is, and how worthwhile it is. Better still, the Confi Guide is written by students who have lived through the courses, not the administration or the faculty. It's like having 100 upperclassmen advisers.

This year the Confi Guide has devoted a special section to the Core Curriculum--its history, its requirements, its courses, and what it will really mean to your education at Harvard. It's the kind of information you won't be receiving from the University.

You can't beat the Confi Guide for straightforward, no bullshit advice about what courses you should take. It's on sale for only $2 at registration, around the campus or at the Crimson, 14 Plympton St.

Soc Sci 174

Coping With International Conflict

It's 2 a.m. in Washington, D.C. The National Security Council has been hastily assembled to debate the American response to the breaking crisis in Asia. The president says. "Now where shall we start, gentlemen?" An aide raises a hand and breaks the silence, saying, "Mr. President, I believe we should formulate a series of balance sheets, starting with our adversary's partisan perceptions and leading to a yesable proposition we can present him with...."

That, according to Law Professor Roger Fisher '43, is how foreign policy should be made. And it's this type of policy-making that Fisher teaches in his popular course, Social Sciences 174.

Fisher, a buddy of State Department heavies, teaches rational and cool-headed policy-making using a series of "tools," which he presents in bi-weekly Socratic lectures. Weekly section meetings reinforce the skills learned in class.

Among the tools which Fisher has developed include the outlining of partisan perceptions in a conflict and what the adversary perceives as the pros and cons of making a specific decision. Some of the tools are a bit gimmicky, such as one which examines the conflict in the context of a game with a set series of moves and group of players, and developing a "yesable proposition," or, in common language, a solution to the conflict.

Xeroxed readings on current ternational conflicts provide the examples for Fisher's presentations and the hour-and-a-half section meetings. However, their bulk shouldn't put you off--if you read The New York Times regularly, it really isn't necessary to do any of them.

The course requirements last year included regular attendance at section meetings, the submission of five-out-of-11 problem sets based on the tools learned each week, a 20- to 30-page analysis of a specific international conflict and a five-page synthesis of this longer paper.

The weekly problem sets are really no problem--they are basically a rehash of Fisher's lectures. Grading is relatively easy; students receive four out of a possible six points on each problem set for just following instructions. And although head section man Bruce Patton urges students to hand in nine of the assignments, few complete more than the required number.

The sections and section leaders in the course are some of the best around Harvard. Sections discussions range from an examination of the weaknesses of Fisher's tools to a simulation of a Mayaguez-type incident, where the section is divided into two antagonistic decision-making bodies which must try to resolve the conflict.

But probably the most exciting part of the course is the coursewide simulation which last year dealt with the Greek-Turkish conflict over Cyprus in 1974. The class split into a number of teams which then tried to negotiate a peaceful settlement to the confrontation.

The course as a whole, and especially the lectures, need some working on. One good reform would be to replace some of Fisher's lectures after the first month-and-a-half of the course (when the merits of the tools become dubious) with more section meetings, where the tools could be applied and evaluated in simulations. Moreover, in the lectures that are kept, Fisher should invite more guest speakers. Last year, the former mayor of Jerusalem visited the class.

Hum 9a

Oral and Early Literature

Oral literature throve in Ancient Greece and, less celbratedly among the ancient Celts and Mesopotamians, and even among some modern-day Yugoslavs. Harvard's lecture halls, with their crowds of literate students, would not seem fertile territory for this genre.

But there's a bard here, who each year steps onto the stage of Sanders Theater to infect students with his love for ancient legends. Unbowed by his decades of teaching, Albert Lord is himself the most legendary of Harvard professors still actively teaching undergraduates, the kind of man today's students will remember 20 years hence the way returning alumni now recall John Finley.

Hum 9 has painlessly introduced literally thousands of hard-to-impress gut-seekers and science concentrators to Homer's muse and the other folk tales studied in the course. Many of them seem