Daniel Shapiro

Daniel Shapiro, Ph.D., Founder and Director of the Harvard International Negotiation Program, serves as associate professor in psychology at Harvard Medical School / McLean Hospital and affiliate faculty at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. He consults regularly for government leaders and Fortune 500 companies, and has advised everyone from hostage negotiators to families in crisis, disputing CEOs to clashing heads of state.

Dr. Shapiro teaches conflict resolution at Harvard College; instructs psychology interns at Harvard Medical School/McLean Hospital; and leads executive education sessions at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, Harvard Kennedy School, and Harvard Medical School/McLean Hospital. He also has served on the faculty at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Named one of the top 15 professors at Harvard University, Shapiro specializes in practice-based research—building theory and testing it in real-world contexts. He has launched successful conflict resolution initiatives in the Middle East, Europe, and East Asia, and for three years chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Conflict Resolution. Focusing extensively on the emotional and identity-based dimensions of negotiation and conflict resolution, Shapiro led the initiative to create the world’s first Global Curriculum on Conflict Management for senior policymakers as well as a conflict management curriculum that now reaches one million youth across more than 20 countries.

Dr. Shapiro has published widely in the field of conflict resolution, and is author of Negotiating the Nonnegotiable and coauthor of the classic Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate. Dr. Shapiro has contributed to The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and other popular publications, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Psychological Association's Early Career Award and the Cloke-Millen Peacemaker of the Year award. The World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader. In May 2019, he was named Harvard’s Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the oldest of the teaching awards given out by the Undergraduate Council.

Education

• B.A., Johns Hopkins University
• Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Amherst

Research interests

Conflict resolution, negotiation, meditation, the role of emotions in negotiation

Selected publications

• Negotiating the Nonnegotiable: How to Resolve Your Most Emotionally Charged Conflicts. Penguin, 2017.
• With Roger Fisher. Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate. Penguin Books, 2006.
• “Before Your Next Fight, Read This.” O, The Oprah Magazine, October 2006.
• “Negotiating the Nonnegotiable: 4 Keys to Resolving Conflict with Your Kid.” Brightly.
• “Of Dating and Diplomacy.” New York Times, May 10, 2016.
• “Why We Are Addicted to Divisive Politics.” TIME, April 18, 2016.