This year’s Great Negotiator Award will be presented to Martti Ahtisaari, former president of Finland and recipient of the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize, for his work on diplomacy and negotiation throughout his career. Ahtisaari will receive the award during a visit to Harvard on September 27.
The Great Negotiator Award is co-sponsored by the Future of Diplomacy Project at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Harvard University’s Program on Negotiation.
President Ahtisaari played a pivotal role in negotiations for Namibian independence from South Africa in the late 1980s, served as the chief U.N. negotiator on Kosovo from 2005 to 2006 and helped end hostilities between the province of Aceh and Indonesia that claimed as many as 50,000 lives over the years of conflict.
During his visit to Harvard, President Ahtisaari will participate in panel discussions about his involvement in the Kosovo final status talks and the negotiations between the province of Aceh and the Indonesian government.
Co-chairing the event with Professor Burns is James Sebenius, Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, who serves on the executive committee on the Project on Negotiation and is Gordon Donaldson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Faculty panelists will include Professors Iris Bohnet (HKS), Brian Mandell (HKS), Deepak Malhotra (HBS), and Eileen Babbitt (Fletcher School, Tufts).
This event is free and open to the public.
