Lior Frankiensztajn will serve as Harvard Law School’s Roger D. Fisher Fellow in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, beginning in September 2024. Frankiensztajn will follow Fisher Fellow Dr. Baba Jallow, and will be followed by 2025 Fisher Fellow Ihab Khatib.
Over the last decade, Frankiensztajn has been working in Israel at the intersection of conflict, negotiation, and leadership with the aim of facilitating and stimulating opportunities for altering the course of Israeli-Palestinian relations. His work has involved applying a range of approaches that engage key stakeholders in the region in strengthening their negotiation skills and their understanding of complex conflicts.
“I am deeply honored to be named the next Roger Fisher Fellow. His groundbreaking work and enduring legacy have profoundly shaped my professional path. His unique ability to connect theory and practice, bringing adversaries together to work through problems while challenging conventional thinking to discover new and better possibilities, has been an inspiration to me,” said Frankiensztajn. “I come to Harvard from a part of the world that is undergoing a devastating war, where the scope of what seems possible is extremely narrow and anxiety levels are high. The Fisher Fellowship provides a timely opportunity to engage the Harvard community and its leading centers in an attempt to challenge existing paradigms and generate useful thinking and ideas for contributing to a constructive way forward.”
Sheila Heen, the Thaddeus R. Beal Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School and deputy director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, said: “Lior brings a rare combination of deep understanding of the history and complexity of the dilemmas facing Israel, and a set of concrete skills, tools and track record forging working relationships and exploring novel paths for collaboration. I am very excited about the opportunity for students and faculty to work alongside him, learn from him, and help find new ways forward.”
Frankiensztajn maintained a close working relationship with the Harvard Negotiation Project, serving as a senior affiliate of the Harvard International Negotiation Program, working with Harvard Business School Professor James Sebenius, Harvard Medical School Professor Dan Shapiro, and colleagues from the Harvard negotiation community.
As a practitioner and student of conflict, Frankiensztajn says he is eager to use the Roger Fisher Fellowship to continue to explore ways that the energy generated by conflicts can become a driver of innovation and bold solutions, a daunting challenge given the trauma, physical insecurity, dehumanization, and polarization that characterizes the most intractable conflicts. He says he is looking forward to engaging with the law school and broader Harvard community on evolving these strategies and others for transforming conflicts.
Frankiensztajn is a 2024 MC-MPA graduate from Harvard Kennedy School, and completed his B.A in Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at Reichman University in Israel.
The fellowship program was established thanks to a gift from the family of the late Roger D. Fisher ’43 LL.B. ’48, who served for decades as the Williston Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, co-founded the Harvard Negotiation Project, and co-authored the best-selling 1981 book, “Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In.”
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