At the time of the Nasser interview, Fisher had already made a name for himself outside Harvard as the host of a television show called "The Advocates," a program which former presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis would later host. For the purpose of securing the Nasser interview, however, the fact that one of Fisher's former students was one of the president's advisors certainly didn't hurt.

Fisher recalls that getting the interview with Nasser wasn't the only accomplishment of the afternoon he spent with the Egyptian president more than 20 years ago. Once the discussion began, Fisher challenged the feasibility of Nasser's demands, requesting that the president consider what would happen to the Israeli prime-minister if she gave up all of that country's occupied territories.

"Nasser started thinking about it and started laughing," says Fisher, smiling as he tells the story, "and he said, 'oh, would she have trouble at home.'"

After the Nasser interview, Fisher continued his examination of the Middle East, urging all involved with the tumultous region to look beyond their own position. In that vein, Fisher penned a book called Dear Israel, Dear Arabs, composed of separate open letters to Palestinians, Egyptians, Israelis and the U.S. State Department.

Although Fisher says the book did not sell very well, it apparently caught the attention of a few people that mattered. Soon Fisher was helping policymakers develop the Rogers Plan, named for former Secretary of State William Rogers, which was an attempt to defuse the 1973 Middle East crisis.

As the end of the decade neared and the prospects for some kind of peace between Israel and Egypt were intensifying, Fisher furthered his expertise in the region by editing a 7-1/2 hour public television documentary on the Middle East situation.

Fisher says he never imagined that he would have a role in the dramatic developments that would occur in the Middle East. But that changed when one of his tennis partners casually asked him a question during a match near their summer homes on Martha's Vineyard. Fisher's partner was then-Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, and the content of the question went far beyond the court's two baselines.

"He said, how do you solve it?" Fisher recalls, referring to an upcoming potential Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiation. "I couldn't wait until the match was over."

Fisher subsequently prepared negotiators for the Camp David summit, which produced the land-mark peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, urging that they start with one conciliatory draft rather than two diametrically opposite ones.

Understanding Each Other

Fisher says he does not try to educate diplomats on the issues they deal with, but instead tries to teach them the nuts and bolts of negotiating. His main goal, he says, is to get each side to understand the other's view. When negotiations were under way during the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, Fisher says that he considered it a success that he was able to get some White House officials to see the Iranian side of the conflict.

"They said 'you can't negotiate with crazy men,'" Fisher says.

In his office a decade later, Fisher reenacts his response to these officials. Suddenly springing to his feet, Fisher strides across the room and scribbles furiously on a blackboard. He draws two-columned chart with the headings "If yes" and "If no," representing whether Iran should release American hostages.

Under "If yes," Fisher scrawls "weak, role down, get O," and "risk of attack."

Fisher says he told the policy-makers: "If a client came to you and said, 'that's the options,' who's crazy?"