Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School

07/27/2026

🎉 Save the Date! 🎉

The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School is excited to announce our upcoming AI Summit, happening April 15-16, 2027 at the NEW David Rubenstein Treehouse!

PON, a consortium bringing together Harvard, MIT, and Tufts — will dive into how artificial intelligence is reshaping the world of negotiation: from research and teaching to real-world practice.
Want to be among the first to know as details come together?

Stay in the know here: http://bit.ly/PONAISummit

07/14/2026

Two senators thought they had a deal. They walked into the Oval Office to close it and found a room full of people who wanted to kill it.

In January 2018, a bipartisan Senate group spent two days hammering out an immigration compromise under a hard deadline. It covered Dreamer protections, border security funding, and visa reform. One senator called it “all peachy.”

Then it all fell apart.

The group had done the hard work of negotiating across party lines. What they hadn’t done was account for the stakeholders who were never at the table but wanted to see the deal fail. It’s one of the more instructive negotiation failures in recent memory, and the lesson applies well beyond Capitol Hill: a solid agreement can still be undone by people who felt excluded from the process.

The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School breaks down what happened, what the negotiators got right, and what they missed. Link in comments.

Have you ever had a deal fall apart because of someone outside the room? Tell us what happened.

07/07/2026

🏛️ Negotiation Lessons from Machiavelli the Diplomat
Before he wrote The Prince, Machiavelli spent 15 years as a diplomat for Florence — a small, unarmed republic negotiating with the biggest bullies of his era: the King of France, the German Emperor, the Borgia pope's son. He once called himself "Mr. Nothing," a man with no cards to play.

Join Alain Lempereur for a PON Live! webinar exploring how Machiavelli the diplomat and Machiavelli the writer can teach us to negotiate with powerful counterparts — even when the odds, and the cards, are stacked against us.

📅 July 27, 2026 12:00pm EST
💻 Virtual / free and open to the public
🔗 Register: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/1717824831878/WN_dWfRRMRTQ72vkt6TlFonJA #/registration
Whether you're facing down a tough counterpart across the table or managing pressure from your own side, this one's full of timeless, practical insight.

06/12/2026

Only a few days left to register...

Managing Complex Negotiations — PON's 2-Day online program for multi-party negotiations — starts June 24. And this weekend is the last chance to register.
https://web.cvent.com/event/82cc01f0-3d7b-4469-901d-c7a78e0c04e4/regProcessStep1?RefId=pon.harvard.edu?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social_media&utm_campaign=pon_program_promo&utm_content=mcn_lastchance

The Program on Negotiation (PON) is pleased to introduce our online-only executive training programs, Negotiation Essentials Online and Managing Complex Negotiations. Online registration by Cvent

06/10/2026

Mediation or arbitration — which should you choose for your dispute?

They're not interchangeable, and the stakes of getting it wrong are real. PON's practical breakdown of when to use each process — and what the research says — is worth reading before your next conflict lands.

Read the full article on the PON Blog:
https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/mediation/whats-wrong-with-traditional-arbitration/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social_media&utm_campaign=pon_program_promo&utm_content=blog

06/08/2026

Negotiation and Leadership is underway this week at Harvard Law School. 🏛️

Professionals from law, business, government, HR, and policy spending three days sharpening the skills that matter most in high-stakes, high-pressure situations.

Interested in attending our next sessions this fall? Learn More here:

At Negotiation and Leadership, you will test your beliefs and assumptions, overcome emotional and rational biases, examine complex negotiation scenarios, and discover a range of competitive and cooperative negotiation strategies. In this acclaimed program, we compress 40 years of groundbreaking rese...

06/03/2026

Managing Difficult Staff...

One of the most common questions we hear from managers and executives: how do you handle an employee whose performance or behavior is creating real problems — without losing the relationship, inviting legal risk, or simply making things worse?

PON's research points to a counterintuitive answer: the root cause of difficult employee behavior is often boredom. Not malice, not incompetence — boredom and disengagement. Which means the solution is often less about discipline and more about negotiation.

The approach: listen to learn. Understand what's underneath the behavior before deciding what to do about it. The managers who do this consistently outperform those who don't — in retention, in team performance, and in their own reputation as leaders.

Read the full post:
https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/dealing-with-difficult-people-daily/how-to-manage-difficult-staff/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social_media&utm_campaign=pon_program_promo&utm_content=blog

The question of how to manage difficult staff can often be traced back to a pernicious problem in organizations: boredom. Improving employee engagement is often the key to resolving such issues.

06/01/2026

Multi-party negotiations are a different game. You need a different toolkit.

Managing Complex Negotiations — PON's new two-day online program — gives you exactly that. Led by Harvard Kennedy School's Brian Mandell. June 24–25, 2026.

Register here:

Two-Day Online Program Navigating complex negotiations requires you to manage multiple parties with diverse objectives while continuously solving problems and adapting to new developments. To equip you with the skills to handle situations, the experts at the Program on Negotiation have developed Man...

05/27/2026

How is AI already changing the way professionals negotiate?

At PON's 2025 AI Negotiation Summit, leading experts shared what they're seeing — and what it means for the professionals who negotiate for a living.

Read the full breakdown on our blog.

At the Program on Negotiation’s 2025 AI Negotiation Summit, negotiation and computer science experts from around the world described how AI tools can empower us to negotiate more effectively for ourselves and others.