Lester R. Kurtz
Lester R. Kurtz
Director of PhD Program in Sociology
Professor
Sociology: Global Social Thought, Nonviolent social movements, Gandhi, ociology of religion
Lester Kurtz is the editor of the Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict (4 vols., Elsevier Academic) and The Warrior and the Pacifist (Routledge), co-editor of Women, War, and Violence (2 vols., Praeger), Nonviolent Social Movements (Blackwell), The Paradox of Repression and Nonviolent Movements (Syracuse U. Press), Nonviolent Conflict and Civil Resistance (Emerald), and The Web of Violence (U. of Illinois Press) as well as author of books and articles including Gods in the Global Village (Sage; Beijing University Press Chinese translation), The Politics of Heresy (U. of California Press), Evaluating Chicago Sociology (U. of Chicago Press), and The Nuclear Cage (Prentice-Hall). He is currently working on a Great Books of the Nonwestern World project that addresses the racism of our social thought. He has lectured in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America and served as chair of the Peace Studies Association and the Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section of the American Sociological Association, which recently awarded him its Robin Williams Distinguished Career Award.
Current Research
Gods and Bombs: Understanding Religion, Violence, and Nonviolence, by Lester R. Kurtz.
Analyzes the conundrum of religion and violence by exploring three motifs: the warrior, the pacifist, and the nonviolent activist. Moving from the Bhagavad Gita, the Hebrew, Christian and Islamic scriptures, the history of the crusades, and the teachings of the Buddha to Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. it concludes by examining the role of religious beliefs, rituals, and institutions in diffusing Gandhian nonviolent civil resistance in the past century. The ethical dilemmas of the warrior and the pacifist, which provide competing moral concepts of fighting against injustice and evil, etc., as a sacred duty, versus injunctions against harming others. Gandhi’s nonviolent civil resister fights like the warrior but avoids harming like the pacifist.
Fighting Violence, by Lester R. Kurtz.
Max Weber claims that we must wrestle with the demon of our time. For him, in Germany at the dawn of the twentieth century, it was rationality. For us, at the beginning of the twenty-first, it is violence.
Global Social Theory: An Introduction and Anthology, by Lester R. Kurtz
Global Social Theory is a preliminary investigation into alternatives to classical Western social theory, an exploratory examination of "The Great Books of the Nonwestern World." One major assumption underlies the organization of this work: our knowledge is so profoundly influenced by the social context in which it is constructed that our theories should not be based exclusively on Euro-American experience. The purpose of this anthology is to initiate a dialogue between Western and Nonwestern theory and to provide source materials for preliminary study.
Selected Publications
Networking for Peace and Development in Africa: Forthcoming
Legacy, Transformation, and Sustainability
Egon Spiegel, Liu Cheng, George Mutalemwa, and Lester R. Kurtz, eds.
Berlin: Springer.
Peace as Nonviolence: Topics in African Peace Studies. 2024
Egon Spiegel, Liu Cheng, George Mutalemwa, and Lester R. Kurtz, eds.
Berlin: Springer.
The Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict 2022
Lester R. Kurtz Editor-in-Chief. 4 volumes. Revised Third Edition.
Oxford: Elsevier Academic Press. Available online at Science Direct.
Second edition: 3 volumes, Oxford: Elsevier Academic Press 2008
First edition: 3 volumes, San Diego: Academic Press, 1999.
The Politics of Heresy: The Modernist Crisis in Roman Catholicism 2022
by Lester R. Kurtz. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: [1986]
University of California Press, 1986, reissued 2022.
Peace Studies for Sustainable Development in Africa, 2022
Egon Spiegel, George Mutalemwa, Cheng Liu, and Lester R. Kurtz, eds.
Berlin: Springer.
The Warrior and the Pacifist: Competing Themes in 2018
Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity,
edited by Lester R. Kurtz. New York: Routledge.
The Paradox of Repression and Nonviolent Movements 2018
edited by Lester R. Kurtz and Lee A. Smithey.
Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
Gods in the Global Village: 2015
The World's Religions in Sociological Perspective
by Lester R. Kurtz. Fourth edition. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press/Sage.
Sociology for the Next Century Series.
First edition 1995
Second edition 2008
Chinese translation: Beijing: Beijing University Press 2010
Italian translation: Bologna: Societa editrice il Mulino 2000
Women, War and Violence: Typography, Resistance and Hope 2015
edited by Mariam M. Kurtz and Lester R. Kurtz.
2 volumes. Santa Barbara: Praeger.
Nonviolent Conflict and Civil Resistance 2012
edited by Sharon Erickson Nepstad and Lester R. Kurtz.
Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change Volume 34.
Emerald Group Publishing. Paperback edition 2015
Books, continued
Nonviolent Social Movements: A Geographical Approach 1999
edited by Stephen Zunes, Lester R. Kurtz, and Sarah Beth Asher.
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Third World Peace Perspectives 1998
Lester R. Kurtz and Shu-Ju Ada Cheng, Guest Editors.
Peace Review: A Transnational Quarterly 10:1 (1998)
The Web of Violence: From Interpersonal to Global 1997
edited by Jennifer Turpin and Lester R. Kurtz.
Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
The Nuclear Cage: A Sociology of the Arms Race 1988
by Lester R. Kurtz. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Evaluating Chicago Sociology: 1986
A Guide to the Literature with an Annotated Bibliography
by Lester R. Kurtz. Foreword by Morris Janowitz.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Heritage of Sociology Series,
Paperback edition, 1986.
Expanded Publication List
Grants and Fellowships
2017- Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute of Nanjing Massacre History and International Peace, Nanjing, China
2014 Lester F. Ward Distinguished Contribution to Applied and Clinical Sociology Award, Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology
2005 Robin Williams Distinguished Career Award, Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section of the American Sociological Association.
Sept. 2000 National Institutes of Health, co-principal investigator with Alfred McAlister,
– May 2003 University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, “Moral Disengagement: Measurement and Modification” (NIH GRANT 1 R21 HD40067: $869,000)
1998 Ford Foundation, “Gandhian Models of Economic Development: Trade versus the Environment” [with Rennison Lalgee and S. Jeyapragasam].
1995 Academic Press grant for preparation of The Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict.
1992- National Science Council (Republic of China), Visiting Research
1993 Professorship.
1990 Indo-U.S. Fellowship, Indo-U.S. Sub-Commission on Education and Culture,
1990 American Institute of Indian Studies Fellowship.
1989 National Science Foundation (U.S.A.) Grant for research in India
-1990
1988 Fulbright Research Fellowship Award for research in India
1987 Distinguished Book Award, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, for The Politics of Heresy: The Modernist Crisis in Roman Catholicism
1980, 1982, 1986, 1988, 1990 University Research Institute Grants, University of Texas at Austin
1995-1996 Faculty Research Assignment, University of Texas at Austin
1979 Stouffer-Starr Dissertation Grant Award, University of Chicago
Courses Taught
Peace and Conflict Studies Global Sociological Theory
Sociology of Comparative Religions History of Sociology
Social Change and Social Movements Religion and Violence
Sociology of Culture Gandhi
Gods and Bombs Nonviolent Social Movements
Blues, Rock and Race Social Movements and Political Protest
Education
University of Chicago Ph.D., 1980 (sociology)
Yale University, M.A.R., 1974 (religious studies)
Westmar College, B.A., 1972 (sociology and religion)
Recent Presentations
“Pondering Violence and Galtung’s Triangle,” American Sociological Association, Chicago, August, 2025.
“Structuring Nonviolence,” Rotary International Peace Committee, Online February 2025.
“Connecting with Global South Scholars.” Eastern Sociological Society, Boston, 2025
“Global Social Thought Pedagogy: Teaching Alternative Theoretical Paradigms and Addressing our Racism,” Course at the American Sociological Association, Montréal, Canada, August, 2024
“Global Social Thought and Structural Racism,” The World House Project from Stanford University, Online, May, 2024.
“Alternatives to War: Lessons from Ukraine.” Eastern Sociological Society, Washington, DC, March, 2024
“Nonviolence and Deliberative Democracy” Panel, Royal Society of the Arts, February, 2024 (online).
“If Not War, Then What?” Benjamin Adjei and Lester R. Kurtz, American Sociological Association Section on Peace, War, and Social Conflict, Philadelphia August, 2023.
“Structuring Nonviolence,” Keynote Address, 14th International Conference, Mahatma Gandhi Center, ABBS School of Management, Bangaluru, India, July 2023.
“Weaving a Web of Nonviolence,” International Peace Research Association, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, May 2023.
“Confronting Deep Racism with Global Social Thought,” Peace and Justice Studies Association, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, October 2022
“Resistance and Peacebuilding: Lessons from Asia,” American Sociological Association, Los Angeles, August 2022
Virtual coffee presentation for the Peace, War, and Social Conflict section of the American Sociological Association: “Global Social Theory: Laying the Foundations for a Peaceful Global Culture” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMADOYWwHqk
Waging Nonviolence and Solidarity 2021 webinar panel on “Lessons from the fight for democracy” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSagY2Lv-pg
“Revisiting Gandhian Ethics in the Contemporary Era” panel presentation for Gandhi Smriti eDialogue series, New Delhi, India (online)
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=414521009769631&ref=watch_permalink
“Gandhian Lessons for the Next 150 Years,” Ambedkhar University,
“Post Pandemic Gandhi Special Lecture by Prof. Lester Kurtz, George Mason University to celebrate 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi,” Mahatma Gandhi Central University, Bihar, (5,200 views)
“Postpandemic Gandhi” Lecture for Mahatma Gandhi Central University of Bihar, India to celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, July 2020.
“Gandhi’s Global Legacies,”
Keynote address at a joint international symposium, “Gandhi’s Global Legacies: Peacebuilding from Asia and the West” hosted by Yonsei University, George Mason University Korea, and the Indian Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, October, 2019.
“Tapping Asian Wisdom for Peacebuilding and Resistance,” Asian Pacific Peace Research Association, Jakarta, Indonesia, April, 2019.
“Social Work in the United States,” Plenary address at the National Conference of Social Work and Social Welfare, Seoul, South Korea, February, 2019.
“Mobilizing for Happiness,” OECD World Forum, Songdo, South Korea, November, 2018.
Dissertations Supervised
Abdullah Al-Nassar, Conversion to Islam and Impact on Racial Identity (2021)