Board Member

Dr. Peter Ackerman is the founding Chair of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict in Washington, DC, and one of the world's leading authorities on nonviolent conflict. He holds a Ph.D. from The Fletcher School, Tufts University, where he presently is the Chairman of the Board, and he is co-author of two seminal books on nonviolent resistance: "A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict" (Palgrave/St. Martin's Press 2001) and "Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century" (Praeger 1994).

Dr. Ackerman was the Executive Producer of the PBS-TV documentary, "Bringing Down a Dictator," on the fall of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. It received a 2003 Peabody Award and the 2002 ABC News VideoSource Award of the International Documentary Association. It aired in the U.S. in March, 2002, and subsequently in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia/Montenegro, Spain, Sweden and Taiwan.

He was also the Series Editor and Principal Content Advisor for the two-part Emmy-no minated PBS-TV series, "A Force More Powerful," which charts the history of civilian-based resistance including Gandhi's campaigns for Indian independence, Danish resistance to German occupation in World War II, the U.S. civil rights movement, the rise of Solidarity in Poland, the people's movement against Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and the dismantling of South Africa's apartheid system. It aired in the U.S. in September 2000, and subsequently in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iran (via satellite), New Zealand, Norway, Palestinian Territories, Spain, Sweden and Venezuela. Both "Bringing Down a Dictator" and "A Force More Powerful" have been translated into Arabic, Burmese, Farsi, French, Indonesian, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish.

Dr. Ackerman has spoken often in public, on television and radio, including BBC, CNN, CBC (Canada), Fox News, and National Public Radio. He has published op-eds and articles, in such publications as the Christian Science Monitor, Harvard International Review, International Herald Tribune, Sojourners Magazine, and Le Monde. He has been cited in The Economist, The Nation, The New Republic, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and U.S. News and World Report.

Dr. Ackerman is Chairman Emeritus of Freedom House, and a member of the board of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also on the Executive Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.