Fisher emphasizes that he is not teaching pure conflict-solving theory, but a theory of how to deal actively with international problems. "In most courses students come in, sit down, and say 'Do it to me, teach me,' like it was a massage parlor," he says. "Here they have to take an active role, and that requires a lot more concentration and effort."

Patton says Soc Sci 174 was "one of the last courses I took at Harvard, and finally someone is saying let's do something about it--take the theory the Government Department puts out, and apply it to the real world."

Fisher taught his conflict-solving theory to a group of international diplomats and government officials in Vienna last fall, and he has been a consultant to both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He now advises the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Asking Questions

"Some people in the government recognize the validity of trying to see disputes as others see them," Fisher says. But he adds that on the whole the State Department operates differently. Bureaucrats tend to ask the wrong questions when a problem comes up, he says: What should I do to make us look good in the press, what has our traditional policy been, what should we do to them in return for their actions? Instead, Fisher believes they should ask why the other guys did what they did and what our side can do to convince them to change their policy.

"I'm just one voice in a thousand outside the government telling them what to do, and I'm without clout, at that, so it's hard to get listened to," Fisher says.

Still, his career has hardly been one of failure and frustration. After graduating from the Law School in 1946, he went off to Europe to help work on the Marshall Plan. Later he practiced law and argued cases before the Supreme Court, and became a professor at the Law School in 1958.

Since then Fisher has led a busy life, getting involved in numerous international conflicts, teaching, writing books, running "The Advocates" and serving on the boards of several international peace foundations. Somehow he hardly seems to fit the mold of the ivory tower intellectual who sits back and theorizes about the world without really living in it. Fisher is an idealist who copes.