Remembering President Jimmy Carter
By Professor Larry Susskind

I had a chance to meet with President and Mrs. Carter at the Carter Center in Georgia some years after his term as President had ended. Roger Fisher and I, representing the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, suggested that we jointly invite all the then-Secretaries-General of multilateral institutions like the OECD, the Commonwealth Countries, the UN, and their senior staff, to an informal gathering to talk about possible ways of expanding the use of mediation in global peacemaking efforts. President Carter and Nelson Mandela were getting ready to announce the creation of the Elders (a group of 12 former heads of state and widely recognized human rights leaders) ready to offer their mediation services. PON was advocating more wide-spread use of mediation in both site specific and general policy conflicts.
For me, the interaction at the Carter Center, was powerful and incredibly instructive. President Carter couldn’t have been more deferential and more eager to hear what we had to say. He and several of the other leaders present, offered stories and remembrances indicating when and how mediation had been helpful and when it had not. President Carter talked in the most personal terms about his efforts to facilitate the Arab-Israeli Peace Process and the Camp David talks in the late 1970’s. Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, talked about why it was so difficult to get the United Nations to advocate more widespread use of mediation.
In all the years that followed, during which President Carter offered his services as an intermediary, both behind the scenes and in the spotlight, he helped me understand what non-partisanship really means and what collaborative problem-solving requires most of all – the ability to listen without judgment. President Carter was a master listener.
As I reflect on President Carter’s life’s work at his passing, I cherish the opportunity I had to think out loud with him about the ways in which mediation and MGA-style negotiation can best be deployed. Now, more than ever, we need to remember what he was trying to teach us.