Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-Maine) called on "the privileged few," students and faculty at Harvard Law School (HLS), to "ensure hope for the hopeless" during a keynote speech Friday for a two-day symposium on negotiation.

Before the speech, he was presented with the first "Great Negotiator Award" by the HLS Program on Negotiation (PON).

The award recognized Mitchell's lengthy political career, which has included work as a federal judge, a senator and chair of the Northern Ireland peace negotiations that resulted in the Good Friday Agreements of 1998.

During his speech, Mitchell discussed two lessons he learned from his work in Ireland that he said could be beneficial to Americans.

He observed a strong correlation between poverty and violence, which he said was as crucial to Ireland's peace process as any religious or nationalistic quarrels.

"Wherever men and women have no hope, wherever they despair, there are the ingredients of violence," he said.

Mitchell said he fears that many young people incorrectly believe America's international influence stems from its military and economic power, rather than the ideals of "individual liberty, equality and opportunity before the law" that he believes truly set America apart as a great nation.

He said the many immigrants whom he naturalized as a federal judge were drawn here by the idea that, as one boy told him, "In America, everyone has a chance."

But America is still not perfectly equal, he said. Mitchell charged the audience to "conduct themselves so that this aspiration is truly realized."

He said that he hoped his message was relatively brief, joking that although he once worked in the Senate, "a place of many words, I come from Maine, which is a place of few words."

In presenting the award to Mitchell, Williston Professor of Law Robert H. Mnookin '64 praised Mitchell for exemplifying the qualities of "preparation, trustworthiness, creativity and diligence that mark a great negotiator."

He quoted several senators, including former senator Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who lauded Mitchell as a man whom "not one man woman or child does not trust."

Mitchell responded to Mnookin's extensive, praising introduction, joking that it was not "too generous, in length or in flattery."

He said he was grateful for the recognition but accepted it with "humility, not as an individual, but as a representative of the many numbers of people before me and the many who will come after who have devoted and even lost their lives for the cause of peace in Ireland."

Before Mnookin's introduction, HLS Dean Robert C. Clark spoke to the guests about the importance of the legal profession.

Many people are quick to lament the growing numbers of lawyers in the United States and throughout the world, he said.

Clark, who wrote an article entitled "Why So Many Lawyers? Are They Good or Bad?" for the Fordham Law Review, said that lawyers have a crucial and constructive role in society that many do not acknowledge.

"To understand this madly optimistic view," Clark said, "you must understand what lawyers do."

He depicted lawyers as those who define relationships between the spheres of society, maintain a normative order, resolve disputes, litigate and help create society's laws.

Purely analytical reasoning does not make for legal success, he said. To be a truly effective lawyer, Clark told his audience, "to get there and get there right, you have to have negotiating skills."

Many of several hundred guests in attendance at the dinner were participating in PON's weekend-long symposium on dispute resolution and legal practice, called "The Lawyer as Problem Solver."

The PON is an intercollegiate organization committed "to improving the theory and practice of negotiation and dispute resolution," according to their website.

Clark said that Mitchell's speech made him even more certain that the award was well-given.