Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he served as founding director of the program in Middle Eastern Studies. Recognized as one the country’s leading scholars of U.S. Middle East policy and of strategic nonviolent action, Zunes has served as a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus project of the Institute for Policy Studies, an associate editor of Peace Review, and a contributing editor of Tikkun. Zunes was honored to serve January-June 2024 as Torgny Segerstedt Visiting Research Professor at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
(See his Vitae, Photo and Contact & Events.)
Over nearly four decades, Stephen Zunes has authored hundreds of articles for scholarly and general readership, and is frequently interviewed and lectures as a prominent expert on Middle Eastern politics, U.S. foreign policy, international terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, strategic nonviolent action, and human rights. He is also the principal editor of “Nonviolent Social Movements” (Blackwell Publishers, 1999), author of the highly acclaimed “Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism” (Common Courage Press, 2003), and co-author (with Jacob Mundy) of “Western Sahara: War, Nationalism and Conflict Irresolution” (Syracuse University Press, second revised expanded edition, 2022).
Zunes received his PhD. from Cornell University, his M.A. from Temple University, and his B.A. from Oberlin College. He has previously served on the faculty of Ithaca College, the University of Puget Sound, and Whitman College. He has served as a research associate for the Center for Global, International and Regional Studies at the University of California-Santa Cruz; a visiting professor for the International Master in Peace, Conflict, and Development Studies at Jaume I University in Spain; and, a visiting research professor at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand.
Zunes has been a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship on Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies at Dartmouth College, a Human Rights Fellowship at the Center for Law and Global Justice at the University of San Francisco, and a Joseph J. Malone Fellowship in Arab and Islamic Studies. He also received research grants through the Institute for Global Security Studies, the United States Institute of Peace, and the International Resource Center, and was the 2016 Research Monograph Awardee along with Michael Beer of Nonviolence International.
In the early 1990s, Zunes served as founding director of the Institute for a New Middle East Policy in Seattle. He was the recipient of the 2015 Dean’s Scholar Award from USF’s College of Arts and Sciences, and won recognition from the Peace and Justice Studies Association in 2002 as their first Peace Scholar of the Year. His work opposing the U.S. invasion of Iraq was the inspiration for creating The Luxembourg Peace Prize for Outstanding Peace Journalism.
He has made frequent visits to the Middle East and other conflict regions, where he has met with top government officials, academics, journalists, and opposition leaders.
Zunes is a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post, Open Democracy, Common Dreams, Truthout, Foreign Policy in Focus, The Progressive, National Catholic Reporter, and other periodicals. His op-ed columns have appeared in major daily newspapers on four continents. In addition, Zunes has spoken at over 150 colleges and universities and scores of community groups in the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa, and Australia, and is a frequent guest on National Public Radio, Pacifica Radio, PBS, BBC, MSNBC, CNN, Democracy Now, Voice of America, Al-Jazeera, China Radio International, and other media outlets for analysis on breaking world events. He has also served as a consultant and board member for a number of peace and human rights organizations in both the United States and overseas. (See Contact & Events and download his vitae and photo.)
See Zunes’s books on the Middle East, Western Sahara, nonviolent action, social movements, and preventing coups.
Search his Archive of over 1000 published, broadcast, and online Articles, Interviews, Lectures, Audio and Video clips, authored or presented by Professor Stephen Zunes.
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