Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he serves as coordinator of the program in Middle Eastern Studies. He is recognized as one the country’s leading scholars of U.S. Middle East policy and of strategic nonviolent action, international terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, strategic nonviolent action, and human rights. Professor Zunes serves as a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus project of the Institute for Policy Studies, an associate editor of Peace Review and contributing editor to Tikkun until June 2024. He is the principal editor of Nonviolent Social Movements (1999) and the author of the highly acclaimed Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (2003). Zunes serves as an advisory committee member and Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus project of the Institute for Policy Studies, an associate editor of Peace Review, and chair of the board of academic advisors for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. In 2002, he won recognition from the Peace and Justice Studies Association as Peace Scholar of the Year. Zunes also served May-June as 2024 Torgny Segerstedt Visiting Research Professor at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. See StephenZunes.org for more about Zunes and his writings on the Middle East, nonviolence and social movements and change, as well as his Western Sahara archive.
Jacob Mundy joined Colgate University’s program in Peace and Conflict Studies as an assistant professor in August 2011. At this book’s first printing, he was a Ph.D. student at the University of Exeter’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, specializing in international politics and conflict in northwest Africa. He is the author of several academic articles and chapters on Western Sahara, appearing in such publications as Mediterranean Politics, Middle East Report, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, Journal of North African Studies and Review of African Political Economy. During the 2007-8 academic year, he was a research fellow with the Centre d’études maghrébines en Algérie supported by a generous grant from the American Institute for Maghrib Studies. He has also worked as a consulting external analyst with the International Crisis Group, conducting field research on the Western Sahara conflict, and has served as a volunteer country specialist for Amnesty USA. See more about Jacob Mundy and his writings, research, awards and appearances.