{"id":335005,"date":"2010-02-18T09:54:17","date_gmt":"2010-02-18T14:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=37979"},"modified":"2010-02-18T09:54:17","modified_gmt":"2010-02-18T14:54:17","slug":"fight-or-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/335005","title":{"rendered":"Fight or flight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Life, with its endless barrage of conflicts, may have just gotten a bit easier thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.harvard.edu\/faculty\/directory\/index.html?id=46\">Robert Mnookin<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Mnookin, the Samuel Williston Professor of Law at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.harvard.edu\/index.html\">Harvard Law School<\/a> and chair of its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pon.harvard.edu\/\">Program on Negotiation<\/a> (PON), has authored \u201cBargaining with the Devil: When to Negotiate, When to Fight,\u201d a book that analyzes some of history\u2019s most tumultuous conflicts while offering invaluable guidance on everything from business disputes to messy divorces.<\/p>\n<p>Focusing on unfair, even evil, actions \u2014 such as blackmail, labor disputes, extortion, theft \u2014 and the adversaries behind them, Mnookin dissects the trappings that interfere with rational thinking and reveals pragmatic approaches to elicit resolution and results.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShould you bargain with the devil?\u201d Mnookin wondered. \u201cMy question, and this book, have their roots in Sept. 11.\u201d A month after the attacks, the PON sponsored a debate about whether President George W. Bush should negotiate with the Taliban.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis debate led me to begin thinking about a more general question: In any particular conflict, how should you decide whether or not it makes sense to negotiate?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mnookin examines the historical and political perils of the Holocaust and South African apartheid to illustrate the reasons why Britain\u2019s Winston Churchill chose not to negotiate with Germany, while South Africa\u2019s Nelson Mandela opted to bargain with a white government that had imposed horrific restrictions. According to Mnookin, both were groundbreaking tactical judgments, and are relevant to today\u2019s fraught global arena.<\/p>\n<p>But everyday conflicts are featured, too. In 10 digestible chapters, Mnookin offers real-life scenarios that feature, for example, family members at odds with each other over an inherited vacation home.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBefore you resort to coercive measures \u2014 such as warfare or litigation \u2014 you should try to resolve the problem,\u201d said Mnookin. \u201cTo negotiate doesn\u2019t mean you must give up all that is important to you. It only requires that you be willing to sit down with your adversary and see whether you can make a deal that serves your interests better than your best alternative does. You can\u2019t hope to make peace with your enemies unless you are willing to negotiate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Life, with its endless barrage of conflicts, may have just gotten a bit easier thanks to Robert Mnookin. Mnookin, the Samuel Williston Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and chair of its Program on Negotiation (PON), has authored \u201cBargaining with the Devil: When to Negotiate, When to Fight,\u201d a book that analyzes some of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-335005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}