Lawrence Susskind

Ford Professor, MIT
Director, Public Disputes Program, Harvard Law
Urban and Environmental Planning, MIT
#9-332
Cambridge, MA 02139

Phone: 617/253-2026
Fax: 617/253-7402
Email: susskind@mit.edu
Other URL http://www.cbuilding.org

Lawrence Susskind is Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has served on the faculty for 35 years and currently directs the Graduate Program in Environmental Policy and Planning. He is also Vice-Chair for Instruction at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, which he helped found in 1982, and where he heads the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program, and teaches advanced negotiation courses. In 1993, Professor Susskind created the Consensus Building Institute. He is currently Senior Consultant for the Consensus Building Institute (CBI) which is a not-for-profit organization based in Cambridge, MA that provides mediation and dispute system
design to both public and private sector clients.

His current work includes leading CBIs efforts to mediate Bedouin land claims in the southern desert of Israel. He has been involved in a wide range of initiatives to address the land claims of First Nations in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.

MEMBER: 1999

Honorary

Background

Professor Susskind has mediated more than 50 disputes, including land use conflicts, facility siting controversies, public policy disagreements, and confrontations over water. He has served as a court-appointed special master and helped facilitate negotiations on arrangements of global environmental treaties. He offers a range of executive training programs each year and has served as guest lecturer at more than two-dozen universities around the world. Professor Susskind's book, Breaking Robert's Rules: The New Way to Run Your Meeting, Build Consensus and Get Results (Oxford University Press, 2006), synthesizes what he has learned about consensus building techniques and strategies that work most effectively in the public arena. He is author of 16 other books including Built to Win: Creating a World-Class Negotiating Organization (Harvard Business Publishing, 2009), Environmental Diplomacy (Oxford, 1995), Negotiating Environmental Agreements (Island Press, 1999), Dealing With An Angry Public (Free Press, 1994), and the award-winning Consensus Building Handbook (Sage, 1999).

Education/Training

Ph.D. Urban Studies and Planning MIT Cambridge, MA
M.C.P City Planning MIT Cambridge, MA
B.A Sociology/English Literature Columbia University New York, NY

ACADEMIC POSITIONS
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
1995 Present Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning
1982 1985 Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning
1978 1982 Associate Professor and Head of Department
1974 1978 Assistant Professor and Assistant Head of Department
1971 1974 Assistant Professor and Director of Undergraduate Program

Harvard Law School
2001 Present Vice-Chair, Instruction, Program on Negotiation
2008 Present Co-Director, Negotiation Pedagogy Initiative
1988 Present Director, MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program
2009 - 2010 Visiting Professor of Law
2004 2005 Visiting Professor of Law
2001 2002 Visiting Professor of Law
1993 2001 Senior Fellow, 2001 Executive
1982 1985 Director, Program on Negotiation