The William Zartman Prize · Awarded Annually
The field’s highest honor, given in the name of the scholar who taught it to wait. One prize each year, to the finest piece of research defended before the Conclave, awarded to a researcher who has already built a body of work. A certificate, a numbered ring, and a name entered permanently in the Register.
Read the Statute · See the Register
Why This Name · A Founder’s Note
I. William Zartman gave the field its hardest and most useful ideas: ripeness, the mutually hurting stalemate, the discipline of reading a conflict for its moment rather than forcing one. Generations of negotiators learned from him that patience is not passivity. But this prize does not carry his name because of his standing alone. It carries his name because of what he did for this house, and I want that told plainly, by me.
When the WMO was young and I was younger, I wrote to him to introduce a project and a vision. He answered. When I asked to meet, he mentioned business in Vienna, and we agreed on breakfast, so I flew from Berlin for a morning. He arrived a little late, looking for a newspaper, and could barely remember our arrangement; we had breakfast anyway, and it became a long, deep conversation, pragmatic and philosophical at once. To this day I suspect the forgetting may have been its own quiet test of character. Who knows.
He stayed. When the WMO held its conference in Berlin, he was on his way to Italy and stopped in Berlin to honor it with his presence, his insight, and his singular sensitivity, closing with thanks for the minds that had been brought together. He drew me into a circle of dedicated peace scholars in which he was the most senior voice and to which I still belong, and it was there that I first published on my intercultural training practice. He asked, once, how such an ambitious project was funded, and was genuinely surprised to hear it was self-funded by a young man with large plans. And when I placed the original training manuscript in his hands, he read it, and he blessed it with his preface.
His support, and the knowledge that he was there when I needed him, meant the world. This prize keeps his standard in the house he helped stand up. Rest in peace, William. Daniel Erdmann, Founder and Director General
What The Prize Honours
The William Zartman Prize is awarded once a year to the single finest piece of research published in the Conflict Insight Journal and defended at the Conclave, by an author who has already built a real body of work. To be eligible, an author must have five or more peer reviewed articles published in the Journal and at least one article defended and accepted at the Conclave, assessed at the moment of the award.
It cannot be applied for. It cannot be bought, and no engagement level brings anyone closer to it. There is exactly one each year, or none: in a year where no eligible article meets the standard, the Register records the year as withheld. Over a lifetime the rings will be few, and that is the intention.
What The Recipient Receives
The Certificate, The Ring, The Register. Issued under the seal of the WMO, a ring in the WMO mark, the recipient’s name, the WMO, bearing the recipient’s made to the recipient’s size, article, the year, and the name, the article and its bearing the recipient’s name citation, published subject, the citation, and the and the registration number, permanently at number of the award. Everything further stands in worldmediation.org: the Register. One ring exists for each award ever made, and never a second of the same number.
The ring can be copied by anyone with a photograph. The entry into the Register cannot. That is where the honor actually lives, and it is why the Register is public.
STATUTE. Read the Statute →
The Register
The Register opens at the first Conclave. It will hold one line a year, and in some years none. Every line will have been earned by an article that was written, reviewed, published, and defended out loud.
Entry format. [Year] · [Name] · [Article title], Conflict Insight Journal · Ring No. [N] · Citation: [text]
The Register has one line a year, and in some years none. Every one of them was written by hand, in an article, first.