Faculty
The faculty for the M.A. program consists of experts in the fields of international politics, human rights, ethnic conflict, culture, civil society movements, race relations and dialogue and mediation processes. They are drawn from both Brandeis University and neighboring academic institutions in the Boston area. In addition, the program utilizes visiting international faculty and draws upon the experience of international experts from many of the governmental, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations working in the field of conflict.
Faculty for Required Modules
Mari Fitzduff, Director
Professor of Intercommunal Coexistence
Mari Fitzduff brings more than 20 years of experience in coexistence policy development, practice and research to the program. From 1990 to 1997, she served as chief executive of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council, which was at the forefront in developing governmental policies and local community programs to tackle many decades of violent conflict. More recently she served as director of UNU/INCORE, a United Nations University center and one of the world’s leading organizations for research on conflict. The center was based at the University of Ulster, where she was chair of conflict studies.
Fitzduff has served as a consultant and trainer on conflict programs in the Middle East, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Basque country and the CIS states. She is frequently tapped by governments and international organizations as an international expert on issues of conflict and diversity. Her many publications include "Community Conflict Skills: A Handbook for Anti-Sectarian Work"; "Beyond Violence: Conflict Resolution Processes in Northern Ireland," which won an American Library Association Notable Book award; and "NGOs at the Table," with Cheyanne Church. She is also coeditor of the three-volume series "The Psychology of War, Conflict Resolution and Peace."
Courses Taught:
COEX 210: Coexistence and Conflict: Theory and Practice
COEX 220: Strategies for Coexistence Interventions
Steven L. Burg
Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics
Chair, Department of Politics
Steven Burg is the author of more than 40 published articles and more than 50 papers on Soviet, Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav politics. His most recent book, "The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention" (co-authored with Paul S. Shoup), won the 2000 Ralph J. Bunche Prize of the American Political Science Association.
Burg served as co-chair of the 1993 International Workshop on Peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina; as the principal consultant to the project on the South Balkans at the Center for Preventive Action of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York; and as principal author of "Toward Comprehensive Peace in Southeast Europe: Conflict Prevention in the South Balkans," the report of the South Balkans Working Group, edited by Barnett Rubin.
Currently, Burg is participating in efforts to foster interethnic accommodation and prevent further ethnic conflict in the Balkans through his association with the Project on Ethnic Relations; he has documented these efforts in a series of reports available from the project.
Burg teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on West European, East European and Balkan politics; on ethnic conflict and conflict management; and on regime change and democratization. He received bachelor of arts from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, a master of arts in Russian area studies from Hunter College of the City University of New York and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago.
Courses Taught:
POL 127b: Managing Ethnic Conflict
Cheyanne Church
Visiting Scholar, Fletcher School, Tufts University
West Africa Liaison, Reflecting on Peace Practice Project
Cheyanne Church was previously the director for institutional learning and research at Search for Common Ground (SFCG). While at SFCG, she spearheaded the use of design, monitoring and evalution tools as integrated components of peacebuilding programming in SFCG offices from Burundi to the Ukraine. She was also involved in a variety of efforts to advance the field of evaluation and peacebuilding, such as the development of a new methodology to measure impacts in Macedonia and Kosovo.
Church has published articles on evaluation and conflict resolution, single-identity work and conflict research effects on policy, and most recently she co-edited "NGOs at the Table: Strategies for Influencing Policy in Areas of Conflict." She has taught courses on peacebuilding and evaluation at INCORE (Northern Ireland) and American University (Washington, D.C.).
Prior to her work at SFCG, Church served as director of policy and evaluation at INCORE. During this period, she was also a member of the advisory group for the Reflecting on Peace Practice Project for Collaborative for Development Action.
Church holds a master of science degree from the London School of Economics and a bachelor of commerce degree from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Courses Taught:Strategies for Coexistence Interventions (with Mari Fitzduff)
Cynthia E. Cohen
Director of Coexistence Research and International Collaborations
Slifka Program in Intercommunal Coexistence
Cynthia Cohen manages the development of research and action partnerships with coexistence organizations around the world as well as the involvement of Brandeis students and faculty in those partnerships. She teaches at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Cohen was the founding director of the Oral History Center in Cambridge, Mass., and has facilitated coexistence efforts involving participants from the Middle East, the United States, Central America and Sri Lanka. She holds a Ph.D. in education from the University of New Hampshire and a master's degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Cohen is the director of an international fellowship program, Recasting Reconciliation Through Culture and the Arts. She is the author of "Working With Integrity: A Guidebook for Peacebuilders Asking Ethical Questions." She writes on the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of reconciliation, and she has published related chapters and articles in conflict resolution, women's studies and education.
Courses Taught:
COEX 250: The Arts of Building Peace
Assistant Professor
Theodore A. Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the Slifka Program in Intercommunal Coexistence. Prior to his appointment in 2006, he was a senior program manager and legal advisor to Conflict Management Group and Mercy Corps in Cambridge MA. During that time he worked extensively as an international negotiation training consultant for governments, corporations and international organizations. He has worked in port apartheid South Africa, with Greek and Turkish Cypriots towards bi-communal capacity-building, with universities and political leaders in Northern and South Central Iraq to develop joint problem-solving skills and strategies. He has been an advisor to several UN Agencies such as WHO, FAO, UNCTAD, and the international food safety organization Codex Alimentarius. Prior to his international work, he was a Deputy District Attorney and Judge Pro Tem in Orange County California. He is a member of the California and American Bar Associations. He received a JD from Western State University in 1972, a Masters in International Law and Diplomacy (MALD) in 1993 from Tufts University, and a Ph.D from Tufts University's Fletcher School in 2009.
COEX 240: Dialogue and Mediation Skills
Other Faculty
Jon A. Chilingerian
Associate Professor of Human Services Management
Jon Chilingerian serves as director of the M.D.-M.B.A. program and as co-director of the Doctoral Training Program in Health Services Research at Brandeis. From 1997 to 1998, he was a visiting professor of health management and organization behavior at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.
Chilingerian is the program director of the European Health Leader’s Program sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, which he designed and launched in 1997. In 1995, he launched a four-year M.D.-M.B.A. Program in Health Management with Tufts Medical School and Northeastern University, which today is the largest M.D.-M.B.A. program in the United States.
Author of "The Lessons and the Legacy of the Pew Health Policy Program," with Corinne Kay, he has scholarly papers and review essays published in numerous journals. Chilingerian was former chair of the Health Care Management Division of the Academy of Management, and, until 2004, sat on the Academy Council.
His research focuses on the management of health-care organizations, the identification of best practices for physicians and the analysis of effective operating strategies. An expert on performance studies using mathematical programming and frontier analysis, he recently completed a three-year project at a Belgian medical center focused on understanding capacity problems in terms of technical, political and cultural systems inside health-care organizations.
Chilingerian is working on a new project to study the adoption of buprenorphine in office-based practice. He is doing research on the Performance Management System of the Air Force in conjunction with the surgeon general and is on the editorial board of several leading health care and management journals. He holds a Ph.D. in management from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
Courses Taught:
HS 253: Leadership and Organizational Behavior
Management of Health Care Organizations
Health Services Research
Shai Feldman
Director, Crown Center for Middle East Studies
Shai Feldman was appointed director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies in February 2005 and is a professor in the politics department at Brandeis University. He organized the Crown Center's inaugural conference in April 2005, which brought together experts from around the world to discuss prospects for Arab-Israeli peace, the future of Iraq, Iran and Syria, the possibility of political transformation in the region, Israel's disengagement plan and the debate over Middle East Studies programs in the United States.
Before coming to Brandeis, Feldman was associated with the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, holding the position of director for his last eight years there. The center was the first in Israel to employ civilians devoted to national security matters.
Feldman is a member of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, serves on the board of directors of Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and was part of the United Nations Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters from 2001 to 2003.
He was a senior research fellow at the Belfer Center from 1995 to 1999 and a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in 1997. After a stint as a senior research associate from 1984 to 1987, he served as director of the Jaffee Center's Project on U.S. Foreign and Defense Policies in the Middle East and directed the center's Project on Regional Security and Arms Control in the Middle East from 1989 to 1994.
He is the author of numerous publications, including "Israeli Nuclear Deterrence: A Strategy for the 1980s," "The Future of US-Israel Strategic Cooperation," "Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control in the Middle East," "Bridging the Gap: A Future Security Architecture for the Middle East" and "Track-II Diplomacy: Lessons from the Middle East."
Educated at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Feldman earned a Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley in 1980.
Courses Taught:
POL 164A: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East
Maria Green
Assistant Professor, Heller School
Maria Green's work focuses on the intersection of human rights standards with economic and social policy at both the national and international levels, including especially the practical implications of adopting and implementing a "rights-based" approach to development and anti-poverty work.
An attorney and a legal scholar, Green has held positions at the International Anti-Poverty Law Center, which she co-founded, and at the Center for Economic and Social Rights; she has also been a consultant for various United Nations projects dealing with human rights and development, including at UNDP (Human Development Report 2000) and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
She holds a law degree and a master of arts degree in Sanskrit and Indian studies, both from Harvard University.
Attila Klein
Adjunct Professor, Heller School
Professor Emeritus of Biology
Attila Klein spent most of his investigative career in the study of environmental influences on the molecular biology of plant development. He then retrained as an aquatic ecologist and is currently engaged in research and teaching on the impact of human activity on natural ecosystems.
He was a founding faculty member of the Sustainable International Development (SID) program and has guided the second-year project of many students working on environment-related issues. These range from forestry practices in Nigeria and Nepal, the valuation of ecological services by a coastal region of Nicaragua, biodiversity protection by indigenous groups in Belize, marine resource management in Western Samoa and kitul palm harvesting in Sri Lanka to the role of the UNHCR in promoting sustainable environmental management in conflict areas.
Abdel Monem Said Aly
Senior Research Fellow, Crown Center for Middle East Studies
Before coming to the Crown Center at Brandeis, Abdel Monem Said Aly served as director of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, a Cairo-based independent research center. He is also a member of the board of the Al-Ahram Foundation.
Regarded as one of the world's foremost experts on the Arab world and its relations with the West, Said Aly was a distinguished visiting fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington in 2004. He was also a research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University in 2003. He is the founder of both the International Alliance for Arab-Israeli Peace and the Egyptian Peace Movement, and he serves on the boards of the Center of Political Studies at Cairo University and the Center for International Studies at Mansoura University.
Said Aly has written extensively about the Arab world in both English and Arabic. His book "The Arabs and September 11th" was named Best Political Book at the 2004 Cairo Book Fair. In 2003, he co-authored a monograph, "Ecopolitics: Changing the Regional Context of Arab-Israeli Peacemaking," with Shai Feldman, the director of the Crown Center.
Said Aly earned a bachelor's degree from Cairo University and master's and doctoral degrees in political science from Northern Illinois University.
Courses Taught:
POL 164A: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East
David Whalen
Adjunct Lecturer, Heller School
David Whalen has 20 years of experience in not-for-profit organizations, including executive positions at Project Bread/The Walk for Hunger and Catholic Charities. He is currently director of development at The Union of Concerned Scientists, a national advocacy organization that works in the areas of the environmental and national nuclear security policy.
Whalen holds a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University, a master of science in human services from the University of Massachusetts-Boston and an MBA from the Heller School at Brandeis.
Courses Taught:
Strategic Fundraising and Development