Cynthia Boaz is associate professor of political science at Sonoma State University where her areas of expertise include political development and quality of democracy, nonviolent conflict and nonviolent struggle, and political communication with an emphasis on media coverage of war. Her work has appeared in numerous academic journals including Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, Feminist Media Studies, Comparative Political Studies, and Sojourners Magazine. She has also contributed chapters to several books on nonviolent action and social movements.
Professor Boaz is an affiliated scholar at the UNESCO Chair of Philosophy M.A. Program in Peace, Conflict and Development Studies in Castellon de la Plana, Spain. She is also on the board of directors at the Metta Center for Nonviolence Education and at the Project Censored/Media Freedom Foundation. She was also recently appointed to the Board of Advisors for Truthout, for whom she is also a contributing writer.
Boaz is also a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, where she often writes about challenges to and quality of democracy in Iran and the United States. Boaz is the associate editor of Peace and Change Journal, the collaborative journal of the Peace History Association and the Peace and Justice Studies Association. She was the opening speaker at the 2009 MK Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence annual conference at the University of Rochester and in the past several weeks, has led workshops or given talks on nonviolent action in India, Vancouver, Boulder, New Orleans, San Francisco and Atlanta. Boaz has recently been referenced or interviewed for her knowledge on strategic nonviolent conflict and particularly Burma’s ʺSaffron Revolutionʺ and Iran’s Green Revolution by international media including BBC and the International Herald Tribune. Last October, she interviewed Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi about the women-led movement in that country. Boaz remains an activist working with several international human rights organizations such as the U.S. Campaign for Burma.