Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco. He serves as an associate editor of Peace Review and a contributing editor of Tikkun, and served for seven years as the first chair of ICNC’s academic advisory committee and co-chair of ICNC’s academic council. He is the author of hundreds of articles for scholarly and general readership on strategic nonviolent action, Middle Eastern and North African politics, U.S. foreign policy, international terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, and human rights. He is the principal editor of Nonviolent Social Movements (Blackwell Publishers, 1999), the author of 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, 2010.) He also authored an ICNC Monograph (2017) entitled Civil Resistance Against Coups: A Comparative and Historical Perspective.
Professor Zunes received his PhD from Cornell University, his MA from Temple University, and his BA from Oberlin College. He has previously served on the faculty of Ithaca College, the University of Puget Sound, and Whitman College.
He has been a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship on Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies at Dartmouth College and a Human Rights Fellowship at the Center for Law and Global Justice at the University of San Francisco. He has also 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; a visiting research professor at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand; and a senior policy analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies.
He has been a recipient of a Joseph J. Malone Fellowship in Arab and Islamic Studies as well as research grants through the Institute for Global Security Studies, the United States Institute of Peace, and the International Resource Center. In the early 1990s, Dr. Zunes served as founding director of the Institute for a New Middle East Policy. In 2002, he won recognition from the Peace and Justice Studies Association as their first Peace Scholar of the Year.
Professor Zunes 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.
He is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, Open Democracy, Foreign Policy in Focus, Common Dreams, Truthout, and Inside Arabia websites. His op-ed columns have appeared in major daily newspapers on four continents. In addition, he 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 and other media outlets for analysis on breaking world events. He serves as a consultant and board member for a number of peace and human rights organizations in both the United States and overseas.