Dr. Maria J. Stephan is the Director of Educational Initiatives at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown and American Universities. Dr. Stephan has worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for European/NATO policy at the U.S. Department of Defense and with the international staff at NATO Headquarters in Brussels. She was a Fellow in the International Security Program and Program on Intra-State Conflict at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (BCSIA) at Harvard University. Her research at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where she received her PhD, focused on civil resistance in the Palestinian, East Timorese, and Kosovo Albanian self-determination movements. Dr. Stephan is currently co-authoring a book (tentatively) entitled Challenging Goliath: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Resistance and is editing a volume on Nonviolent Struggle in the Middle East.