Lester R. Kurtz is professor of public sociology at George Mason University where he teaches courses on violence and nonviolence, peace and conflict, social movements, comparative sociology of religion, and global social thought. Kurtz holds a Master's in Religion from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago and was previously director of Religious Studies at the University of Texas-Austin. He has lectured in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America and taught as a visiting professor at the European Peace University, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Delhi University in India, and Tunghai University in Taiwan. Dr. Kurtz is the past chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Association as well as the Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section of the American Sociological Association, which awarded him its Robin Williams Distinguished Career Award in 2005. In 2014 he was given the Lester F. Ward Distinguished Contribution to Applied and Clinical Sociology Award by the Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology. He is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute of Nanjing Massacre History and International Peace in Nanjing, Republic of China.