Program Faculty
The faculty for the Master's Program in Coexistence and Conflict consists of experts in the fields of international politics, human rights, ethnic conflict, culture, civil society movements, race relations and dialogue and mediation processes. They are drawn from both Brandeis University and neighboring academic institutions in the Boston area. In addition, the program utilizes visiting international faculty and draws upon the experience of international experts from many of the governmental, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations working in the field of conflict.Faculty for Required Courses
Alain Lempereur, Program Director, Master's Program in Coexistence and Conflict, Alan B. Slifka Chair Professor in Coexistence and Conflict
Mediator in conflicts and negotiation expert, he develops worldwide programs in research, consulting, and executive education on responsible leadership and negotiation. His current research is devoted to 
responsible leadership and negotiation. One of his books The First Move. A Negotiator’s Companion has been edited in several languages. Recently, the Financial Times designated him "Professor of the Week" for his academic contributions.
Alain Lempereur is member of the Executive Committee of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.
He advises international organizations, such as the European Commission and Parliament, NATO, OECD, UNDP, UNITAR, and WHO. Through the Wilson International Center for Scholars, he facilitated reconciliation and leadership programs in Africa, notably, in Burundi (2003-2007) and in the D.R. Congo (2006-2009). He belongs to the UN mediators' network, and also moderated local and global meetings for the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (2009-2011) for the OECD. He also advises consulting firms, like the Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey, as well as international corporations.
Negotiation pioneer in Europe and Professor of Negotiation and Mediation at Essec Business School (Paris and Singapore, 1995-2011), he established, and developed, an academic institute called Irene – peace in Greek –, which he led as its first director (1995-2008). He designed and led training programs for many universities and professional schools (Ena, Enpc, Lebanese University, University of Paris). In 2003, he initiated the Negotiators of the World programs and in 2004, he developed the negotiation curriculum for the European Commission. In 2009, he became the Essec Negotiation and Mediation Chair Professor.As a member of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, he has taught as a visiting professor at Harvard, as well as at the University of Mannheim (Germany) and at CIIM (Cyprus International Institute for Management).A Belgian citizen, he and his wife, Michele, have three children Daria, Henri, and Emery.
Courses Taught:
- HS 255f1 - Responsible Negotiation (1) - The Fundamentals
- HS 255f1 - Responsible Negotiation (2) - Advanced
- HS 272a - Responsible Leadership
Mari Fitzduff, Professor and Founding Director, Master's Program in Coexistence and Conflict
Mari Fitzduff brings more than 20 years of experience in coexistence policy development, practice and research to the program. From 1990 to 1997, she served as chief executive of the Northern Ireland 
Community Relations Council, which was at the forefront in developing governmental policies and local community programs to tackle many decades of violent conflict. More recently she served as director of UNU/INCORE, a United Nations University center and one of the world’s leading organizations for research on conflict. The center was based at the University of Ulster, where she was chair of conflict studies.
Fitzduff has served as a consultant and trainer on conflict programs in the Middle East, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Basque country and the CIS states. She is frequently tapped by governments and international organizations as an international expert on issues of conflict and diversity. Her many publications include "Community Conflict Skills: A Handbook for Anti-Sectarian Work"; "Beyond Violence: Conflict Resolution Processes in Northern Ireland," which won an American Library Association Notable Book award; and "NGOs at the Table," with Cheyanne Church. She is also coeditor of the three-volume series "The Psychology of War, Conflict Resolution and Peace."
Courses Taught:
- HS 210A: Coexistence and Conflict: Theory and Practice
- HS 220A: Strategies for Coexistence Interventions
Daniel Bar-Tal, Visiting Professor, Tel Aviv University, School of Education
Daniel Bar-Tal is Branco Weiss Professor of Research in Child Development and Education at the School of Education and past director of the Walter Lebach Institute for Jewish-Arab Coexistence through Education, Tel 
Aviv University. He also was coeditor of the Palestine Israel Journal. He served as the President of the International Society of Political Psychology (1999-2000). In 1991 and again in 2009, he was awarded the Otto Klineberg Intercultural and International Relations Prize of SPSSI and in 2000-2001 he was awarded the Golestan Fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Science. In 2006 his book, coauthored with Yona Teichman, "Stereotypes and Prejudice in Conflict," published in 2005 by Cambridge University Press, received the Alexander George Award of the International Society of Political Psychology for the best book in Political Psychology. In 2006 he also received Peace Scholar Award of the Peace and Justice Studies Association for great scholarship and hard work in studying conflicts and peace making.
His research interest is in political and social psychology studying socio-psychological foundations of intractable conflicts and peace making. Specifically, he studied the evolvement of the socio-psychological infrastructure in times of intractable conflict that consists of shared societal beliefs of ethos of conflict, of collective memory, and emotional collective orientations. He authored "Group Beliefs" (Springer-Verlag, 1990) and "Shared Beliefs in a Society" (Sage, 2000), "Living with the Conflict" (Carmel, 2007- in Hebrew), and coauthored "Stereotypes and Prejudice in Conflict: Representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish Society" (Cambridge University Press, 2005), as well as co-edited "Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations" (Springer-Verlag, 1988), "Stereotyping and Prejudice" (Springer-Verlag, 1989), "Patriotism in the Lives of Individuals and Nations" (Nelson Hall, 1997) "Concerned with Security" (JAI, 1998), "How Children Understand War and Peace" (Jossey-Bass, 1999) and "Patriotism: Homeland Love" (Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 2004, in Hebrew). In addition he has published over two hundred articles and chapters in major social and political psychological journals, books and encyclopedias.
Courses Taught:
Steven L. Burg, Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics. Chair, Department of Politics
Steven Burg is the author of more than 40 published articles and more than 50 papers on Soviet, Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav politics. His most recent book, "The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and 
International Intervention" (co-authored with Paul S. Shoup), won the 2000 Ralph J. Bunche Prize of the American Political Science Association.
Burg served as co-chair of the 1993 International Workshop on Peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina; as the principal consultant to the project on the South Balkans at the Center for Preventive Action of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York; and as principal author of "Toward Comprehensive Peace in Southeast Europe: Conflict Prevention in the South Balkans," the report of the South Balkans Working Group, edited by Barnett Rubin.
Currently, Burg is participating in efforts to foster interethnic accommodation and prevent further ethnic conflict in the Balkans through his association with the Project on Ethnic Relations; he has documented these efforts in a series of reports available from the project.
Burg teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on West European, East European and Balkan politics; on ethnic conflict and conflict management; and on regime change and democratization. He received a bachelor of arts from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, a master of arts in Russian area studies from Hunter College of the City University of New York and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago.
Courses Taught:
Cynthia E. Cohen, Director of Coexistence Research and International Collaborations, Slifka Program in Intercommunal Coexistence
Cynthia Cohen manages the development of research and action partnerships with coexistence organizations around the world as well as the involvement of Brandeis students and faculty in those partnerships. She teaches at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Cohen was the founding director of the Oral History Center in Cambridge, Mass., and has facilitated coexistence efforts involving participants from the Middle East, the United States, Central America and Sri Lanka. She holds a Ph.D. in education from the University of New Hampshire and a master's degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Cohen is the director of an international fellowship program, Recasting Reconciliation Through Culture and the Arts. She is the author of "Working With Integrity: A Guidebook for Peacebuilders Asking Ethical Questions." She writes on the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of reconciliation, and she has published related chapters and articles in conflict resolution, women's studies and education.
Courses Taught:
Isabella Jean, Adjunct Lecturer
Isabella Jean has been affiliated with the MA program as a discussant since 2008 and was appointed as Adjunct Faculty in the fall of 2010. She is a 2006 graduate of the MA Program in Coexistence and Conflict hailing
from its very first cohort of students. Isabella worked and consulted for international peacebuilding and development organizations primarily focusing on research and evaluation, facilitation, curriculum development and training. She joined CDA Collaborative Learning Projects as a Field Associate in 2007 supporting the Do No Harm Project, the Listening Project and the Reflecting on Peace Practice Project in many field-based collaborative learning efforts involving international agencies and peace and development practitioners in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Israel/Palestinian territories, Tajikistan and Mindanao (Philippines). In addition to field research, she conducts training and analysis on issues of aid and peacebuilding effectiveness and conflict sensitivity. Between 2005-2008, as a consultant with Coexistence International, she has conducted policy research on issues of conflict, coexistence, democracy and education in multi-ethnic societies. Prior to attending the MA Program, Isabella conducted evaluation research and training at a national non-profit focused on education policy, school reform and community organizing. As a Watson Fellow, she conducted field research on youth initiated coexistence initiatives in N. Ireland, South Africa, Cyprus, Israel, Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Egypt. As Adjunct Faculty in the MA Program, she facilitates discussion sessions on coexistence theory, conflict analysis and strategic coexistence interventions, and teaches a 7 week course on monitoring and evaluation of peacebuilding interventions. She holds an MA in Coexistence and Conflict from Brandeis University and a B.A. in International Relations & Anthropology from Bowdoin College. Isabella lives in Boston with her husband and two daughters.
Courses Taught:
Ted Johnson, Assistant Professor in the Slifka Program in Intercommunal Coexistence, and Advising Head for the COEX-SID Dual Degree program
Theodore A. Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the Slifka Program in Intercommunal Coexistence. Prior to his appointment in 2006, he was a senior program manager and legal advisor to Conflict Management Group and Mercy Corps in Cambridge, MA. During that time he worked extensively as an international negotiation training consultant for governments, corporations and international organizations. He has worked in post-apartheid South Africa, with Greek and Turkish Cypriots towards bi-communal capacity-building, and with universities and political leaders in Northern and South Central Iraq to develop joint problem-solving skills and strategies. He has been an advisor to several UN Agencies such as WHO, FAO, UNCTAD, and the international food safety organization Codex Alimentarius. Prior to his international work, he was a Deputy District Attorney and Judge Pro Tem in Orange County California. He is a member of the California and American Bar Associations. He received a JD from Western State University in 1972, a Masters in International Law and Diplomacy (MALD) in 1993 from Tufts University, and a PhD from Tufts University's Fletcher School in 2009.
Courses Taught:
- HS 230F: Coexistence Research Methods
- HS 240A: Dialogue and Mediation Skills
- HS 250F: Intercultural Communication for Conflict and Development Practitioners
- HS 257B: Conflict Resolution by Negotiation
- HS 260F: Development, Aid, and Coexistence
- HS 261F: Advanced Development, Aid, and Coexistence
- HS 270A: The Future of Diversity Work
David Steele , Adjunct Faculty and Consultant in Conflict Transformation
David Steele has 20 years experience working with political, religious, and other civil society actors to effectively facilitate conflict transformation and interfaith coexistence within unstable, violence-prone situations of 
inter-ethnic and sectarian conflict. During 2010-2011, he served as adjunct faculty in the Heller School, led workshops for US Government personnel on developing “Programming in Religious Contexts,” and worked developed a manual for use in discussion of Muslim/Christian reconciliation efforts in Nigeria and inter-ethnic conflict in Kenya. During 2009-2010, he worked with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, following post-election violence in Kenya, to design a curriculum and manual for use in peacebuilding and conflict transformation and co-lead workshops for 300 participants from local NGOs. During 2008-2009 he served as Senior Reconciliation Facilitator with the Baghdad office of the U.S. Institute of Peace, providing training in negotiation, problem solving and interfaith dialogue for a variety of personnel from Iraqi Government agencies, educational institutions, religious groups and civil society organizations. In addition, he has previously worked as (1) a program manager at Mercy Corps for conflict management projects in Iraq, Sri Lanka and Indonesia (2004-2006), (2) program manager for a conflict management project in Macedonia, then interim executive director, at Conflict Management Group in Cambridge, MA (2003-2004), and (3) a fellow in the Program on Preventive Diplomacy at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington where he directed a project on conflict resolution for religious communities in the former Yugoslavia (1994-2003). Steele has a Ph.D. in Christian Ethics and Practical Theology from the University of Edinburgh, where he wrote a dissertation on a theological assessment of the Harvard-based “principled negotiation.” He is also the author of numerous other publications on faith-based peacebuilding, including: “Reconciliation Strategies in Iraq,” and an “Overview to Faith-Based Peacebuilding."
During the 2010 - 2011 academic year at Heller, Prof. Steele was TA for the following courses: Dialogue and Mediation Skills; Development, Aid and Coexistence; and Advanced Development, Aid and Coexistence.
Courses Taught:
Tijs van Maasakkers, Interim Lecturer
Tijs van Maasakkers is a PhD-Candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Environmental Policy and Planning. His dissertation research focuses on the development of ecosystem services markets in the 
United States. Van Maasakkers has conducted research on environmental conflicts in the United States, the European Union and South Africa. He has worked with the United States Bureau of Reclamation, the United States Geological Survey, the National Audubon Society and the Consensus Building Institute on the assessment and intervention in environmental conflicts in the Columbia and Mississippi River basins in the US. While at MIT, he has received a Master’s in City Planning. He has assisted Prof. Susskind in teaching a course on the use of dispute resolution in the public sector and an introductory course on environmental policy. Before coming to MIT, he received a Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, he worked on the creation of the Amsterdam Center for Conflict Studies, teaching an introduction course on conflict studies.
Courses Taught:
Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch, Post-Doctorate Fellow for Schusterman Center for Israel Studies
Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Schusterman Center of Israel Studies. She is also an Associate at the International Security Program, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard 
University. Michal holds a PhD in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a B.A in Political Science from Tel Aviv University. Her book manuscript, titled: And the Truth Shall Make You Free: The International Norm of Truth-Seeking, develops a theory for the emergence and spreading of international norms in order to explain the worldwide prevalence of truth and reconciliation commissions.
Currently, Michal is working on two research projects. In her first project, she studies the political implications of the ideational and political alliance between the American Christian Right and the State of Israel. Her second project evaluates the feasibility of introducing symbolic reparations into the negotiations over the Palestinian refugee issue.
At Brandeis, Michal has been teaching at the Politics department on US-Israel relations, as well as courses for Heller, on Transitional Justice and Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East.
- HS 219F: Transitional Justice: Introduction
- HS 258F: Transitional Justice: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in Comparative Perspective
Jon A. Chilingerian, Associate Professor of Human Services Management
Jon Chilingerian serves as director of the M.D.-M.B.A. program and as co-director of the Doctoral Training Program in Health Services Research at Brandeis. From 1997 to 1998, he was a visiting professor of health 
management and organization behavior at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.
Chilingerian is the program director of the European Health Leaders Program sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, which he designed and launched in 1997. In 1995, he launched a four-year M.D.-M.B.A. Program in Health Management with Tufts Medical School and Northeastern University, which today is the largest M.D.-M.B.A. program in the United States.
Author of "The Lessons and the Legacy of the Pew Health Policy Program," with Corinne Kay, he has scholarly papers and review essays published in numerous journals. Chilingerian was former chair of the Health Care Management Division of the Academy of Management, and, until 2004, sat on the Academy Council.
His research focuses on the management of health-care organizations, the identification of best practices for physicians and the analysis of effective operating strategies. An expert on performance studies using mathematical programming and frontier analysis, he recently completed a three-year project at a Belgian medical center focused on understanding capacity problems in terms of technical, political and cultural systems inside health-care organizations.
Chilingerian is working on a new project to study the adoption of buprenorphine in office-based practice. He is doing research on the Performance Management System of the Air Force in conjunction with the surgeon general and is on the editorial board of several leading health care and management journals. He holds a Ph.D. in management from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
Courses Taught:
Shai Feldman, Director, Crown Center for Middle East Studies
Shai Feldman was appointed director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies in February 2005 and is a professor in the politics department at Brandeis University. He organized the Crown Center's inaugural 
conference in April 2005, which brought together experts from around the world to discuss prospects for Arab-Israeli peace, the future of Iraq, Iran and Syria, the possibility of political transformation in the region, Israel's disengagement plan and the debate over Middle East Studies programs in the United States.
Before coming to Brandeis, Feldman was associated with the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, holding the position of director for his last eight years there. The center was the first in Israel to employ civilians devoted to national security matters.
Feldman is a member of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, serves on the board of directors of Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and was part of the United Nations Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters from 2001 to 2003.
He was a senior research fellow at the Belfer Center from 1995 to 1999 and a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in 1997. After a stint as a senior research associate from 1984 to 1987, he served as director of the Jaffee Center's Project on U.S. Foreign and Defense Policies in the Middle East and directed the center's Project on Regional Security and Arms Control in the Middle East from 1989 to 1994.
He is the author of numerous publications, including "Israeli Nuclear Deterrence: A Strategy for the 1980s," "The Future of US-Israel Strategic Cooperation," "Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control in the Middle East," "Bridging the Gap: A Future Security Architecture for the Middle East" and "Track-II Diplomacy: Lessons from the Middle East." Educated at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Feldman earned a Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley in 1980.
Courses Taught:
Abdel Monem Said Aly, Senior Research Fellow, Crown Center for Middle East Studies
Before coming to the Crown Center at Brandeis, Abdel Monem Said Aly served as director of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, a Cairo-based independent research center. He is also a member of the board of the Al-Ahram Foundation. Regarded as one of the world's foremost experts on the Arab world and its relations with the West, Said Aly was a distinguished visiting fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington in 2004. He was also a research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University in 2003. He is the founder of both the International Alliance for Arab-Israeli Peace and the Egyptian Peace Movement, and he serves on the boards of the Center of Political Studies at Cairo University and the Center for International Studies at Mansoura University.
Said Aly has written extensively about the Arab world in both English and Arabic. His book "The Arabs and September 11th" was named Best Political Book at the 2004 Cairo Book Fair. In 2003, he co-authored a monograph, "Ecopolitics: Changing the Regional Context of Arab-Israeli Peacemaking," with Shai Feldman, the director of the Crown Center. Said Aly earned a bachelor's degree from Cairo University and master's and doctoral degrees in political science from Northern Illinois University.
