William Ury

William Ury is an American author, academic, anthropologist, and negotiation expert. He co-founded the Harvard Program on Negotiation. Additionally, he helped found the International Negotiation Network with former President Jimmy Carter. Ury is the co-author of Getting to Yes with Roger Fisher, which set out the method of principled negotiation and established the idea of the best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) within negotiation theory.

Background Ury was educated at Le Rosey and at Phillips Andover where he graduated in 1970. In college, Ury studied anthropology, linguistics, and classics.

Other books written by Ury include: Beyond the Hotline: How Crisis Control Can Prevent Nuclear War (1985) (edited by Martin Linsky) The Power of a Positive No: How to Say No and Still Get to Yes (2007) Getting to Yes with Yourself (And Other Worthy Opponents) (2015) Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) in an Age of Conflict (2024)

International work Ury has worked as a negotiation adviser and mediator in conflicts in the Middle East, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, Indonesia, Yugoslavia, Chechnya, and Venezuela among other countries.

Ury founded and served as the director of the Harvard Nuclear Negotiation Project. In 1982, the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency requested that the Harvard Negotiation Project compile a report applying its understanding of human communication to the issue of superpower restraint to reduce the risk of a war started by accident, terrorism, mistake, runaway escalation, or misperception. Together with Richard Smoke, Ury interviewed U.S. and Soviet specialists and government officials, and published the report for the government in 1984. The report was the basis for Ury's book Beyond the Hotline. During this time, he also acted as a consultant to the Crisis Management Center at the White House, working to create Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers in Washington and Moscow, which were the subject of the first arms control agreement signed by President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. The e-Parliament has given birth to the Climate Parliament, which links thousands of elected officials from 50 different countries to work together informally on issues of renewable energy and climate. The Abraham Path Initiative was incubated at the Harvard Negotiation Project and is endorsed by the United Nations World Tourism Organization, the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and other international partners. The non-profit, non-religious and non-political initiative aims to support local partners in developing the Abraham Path as:

In April 2014, the Abraham Path was listed in National Geographic Traveler (UK) magazine as number one on its list of the ten best walking trails in the world.

Awards Ury is the recipient of the Whitney North Seymour Award from the American Arbitration Association. He also received the Distinguished Service Medal from the Russian Parliament for his work on the resolution of ethnic conflicts. On March 11, 2022, Ury received the International Advocate for Peace Award from the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution—the country's preeminent legal journal of arbitration, negotiation, mediation, settlement, and restorative justice —as part of its Melnick Annual Symposium.