Zach Merchant, television host of Unscripted on Arlington Public News, recently sat down with DUSP’s faculty member, Bruno Verdini, to discuss the approach to his popular undergraduate course, 11.011 The Art and Science of Negotiation and his forthcoming book by MIT Press, Winning Together: The Natural Resource Negotiation Playbook. 

The Art and Science of Negotiation, a course taught for decades at MIT by tenured faculty from MIT, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, and Harvard Law School, was entirely re-built from scratch by Bruno when he was entrusted with the course for the first time in the spring of 2016. The first course he would ever teach, Bruno created the new syllabus with a large emphasis on building character, exploring ethical concerns, and embracing emotions, to be combined with sound analytics. The results have been incredible, with the course becoming one of the highest rated electives on the entire MIT campus. In turn, more than 400 MIT STEM undergraduate students have been pre-registering for the course. These enrollment numbers far exceed any expectations for an MIT course, let alone an elective that is not part of any popular major, minor, or concentration. This represents an 800% increase in pre-registration numbers in direct response to the implementation of Bruno’s teaching.

So, what happened? In Bruno’s own words, “credit goes to the MIT undergraduate students. They are undeterred by the long odds to make the course and get one of 42 course spots available per term. As a result, we get a tremendously diverse pool of talent in the classroom. Our students come from all four years and from more than 18 different MIT departments, and are frequently featured in MIT News due to their outstanding career paths. It’s a privilege and an honor to be able to spend a semester with them, exploring the ways in which their brilliant minds and HEARTS can embrace the potential of negotiation to help us live better personal and professional lives. In addition, I get to work hand-in-hand with a fabulously insightful teaching team of undergraduate and graduate colleagues who are passionate about negotiation coaching. I feel like I’m in a movie. Or perhaps it’s a dream. In which case, don’t’ wake me up!” 

In the television interview, Zach and Bruno talk as well about Winning Together, a book to be published by MIT Press this upcoming fall, which builds upon Bruno’s latest research at MIT’s Science Impact Collaborative and Environmental Policy and Planning Group. The work underpinning the book won Harvard Law School’s award for the best research of the year in negotiation, decision-making, mediation, and dispute resolution. This is the first time that the award, named after the late Professor Howard Raiffa (aptly described by the New York Times as a pioneer and towering figure in the decision science field), is given to someone from MIT as well as to someone born, raised, and educated in Latin America. 

So, what’s the secret? Bruno laughs, “I have been very fortunate to be surrounded by incredibly generous mentors in the U.S. and in Mexico. That’s the key; just look at the acknowledgements in my book and you’ll see what I mean! Just to name a few, here in the U.S., Professor Lawrence Susskind, Dean Melissa Nobles, and Professor Steven Jarding fostered a space where I could learn something new every single day and they did so with tremendously caring and inspiring hearts. In Mexico, I was fortunate to count on the mentorship from many outstanding public servants, in particular Leonardo Beltrán, Leydi Barceló, and Carlos Ortiz. Wherever I have been, I always gravitate towards professionals with the ceaseless and undying conviction to go against the presumption that there are not enough resources to go around, and that one side must win and the other must inevitably lose. When you have a can-do, problem-solving attitude, good things tend to happen. That’s what DUSP really stands for.”

Winning Together: The Natural Resource Negotiation Playbook explores how, in spite of the current global diplomatic climate, under conditions of severe drought, increased climate risks, and infrastructure failures, professionals on the ground are defying the odds and effectively increasing river-basin supply; enhancing irrigation and storage infrastructure; restoring ecosystems and habitats; strengthening coordination between publicly traded and state owned energy companies; and re-defining the scope and impact of diplomatic partnerships between developed and developing countries.

And how does the multi-cultural background come into play? In Bruno’s words, “Yes, Zach, who along with the entire Arlington Public News team was wonderfully insightful throughout the interview process, asks me about that at the end of our unscripted conversation. I share with him that being French, Italian, and Mexican has always encouraged me to discover the blind spots in each culture and be proactive about learning from one another. Naturally, each culture has myriad expressions and interpretations. It’s never a monolith, it’s always in motion, and so to admire and be curious about what different life paths can teach us is absolutely crucial. France, for example, might mean Victor Hugo and Voltaire. France, to me, might also mean Notre Dame and Saint Thérèse de Lisieux. Naturally, the same applies to Mexico, and so on. The whole point is, can we openly seek for the kernels of truth and wisdom there for the taking, and can we keep improving how we live by learning from one another? I did not share this in the interview, but my grandfather, who recently passed away, and has always been such a strong inspiration for me, fought 4 years of World War II, from 1941 to 1945, so his stories about his time in the war, in terms of his views on light and darkness, human nature, and the partnership of the French army with the Allies, left an indelible mark with me. He was Italian but born in Algeria, and thus fighting for the French North African army. He was right in the middle of the brutal Battle of Monte Cassino and part of the very first battalion liberating Rome, and so on. He married my grandmother, a Lutheran Alsatian whom he met one night, as the Nazis were bombarding one neighborhood near the Rhine River and the Allied soldiers were liberating and being given respite in the next. She forgot to pour a cup of coffee for him, and that was the start of a romance that led to a 70-year marriage. Then my Lutheran dad, born in Strasbourg, fell in love with my Catholic Mexican mother, in a bookstore, while he was on a brief vacation in Mexico City that only got started in the first place because his flight to the Caribbean got canceled. They’ve been married now for over 35 years. Sure enough, since I was little, I thought that perhaps, I would meet my wife somewhere outside of Mexico. And indeed, I met my fiancé, a Jewish New Yorker, when we were both graduate students at MIT’s DUSP. We met in the very classroom that then became the classroom where I wrote my research and then went on to teach. You can’t plan this stuff up! So yes, I get to see every day the impact of being critical, open, and inspired about what different perspectives and traditions can teach you, in negotiation and in life!”