Roger Fisher was the Samuel Williston Professor of Law, Emeritus, Harvard Law School and founder of the Harvard Negotiation Project. A pioneer in the field of international law and negotiation, and the co-founder of the Harvard Negotiation Project, Fisher died on August 25, 2012. Fisher helped to establish negotiation and conflict resolution as a field deserving academic study.
Fisher’s work laid the foundation on which much of the field of negotiation and conflict resolution has been based. His best-selling book, “Getting to Yes: Negotiating Without Giving In” (co-authored with William Ury in 1981), has been translated into 23 languages and has sold more than 3 million copies worldwide.
According to Robert Mnookin, “Roger Fisher taught that conflict is not simply a ‘zero-sum’ game in which a fixed pie is simply divided through haggling or threats. Instead, he showed how by exploring underlying interests and being imaginative, parties could often expand the pie and create value.”
According to Robert C. Bordone: “Roger was a master at the art of perspective-taking, of understanding how deep human needs—to be heard, valued, respected, autonomous and safe—when unmet or trampled upon, become seeds of evil and violence, seeds that can cause us to vilify each other, and that motivate us to see the world in stark black-and-white terms.
