Dr. Mubarak Awad is a Palestinian educator, author, and psychologist. Now a US citizen, Dr. Mubarak has founded numerous programs, centers, and NGOs whose common theme is the power of nonviolent approaches to effect social change, justice, and peace in Israel/Palestine and in the international community. In his talk Dr. Awad will review his early adoption of non-violent action to deal with political and social issues. Viewed by many as the Palestinian Mohatma Gandhi, Dr. Awad will describe the other influences on his philosophy and life’s work, including the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, the Quakers, and the Mennonites in addition to Gandhi. He will explain, with the passion of a lifetime of work behind him, why and how the theories and methods of nonviolence can work to resolve the impasse in Palestine today.

After being born in Jerusalem in 1943 and losing his father in the Nakba of 1948, Mubarak was educated in the US. Soon after he returned to Jerusalem in 1983, he established the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence there. His promotion of nonviolent resistance to the occupation during the first Palestinian intifada in 1987 got him deported by Israel in 1988. Not to be deterred from educating about and advocating for nonviolent theory and methods, in 1989 Dr. Awad founded Nonviolence International, a center in Washington, D.C.; he will frankly assess the center’s successes and failures. Finally, Dr. Awad will share his thoughts on the future of nonviolent struggle as an instrument of change in the international community.

Mubarak Awad teaches in the School of International Services at the America University in Washington, D.C. A father and grandfather, he lives with his wife in Maryland and continues to teach, speak, and write.