Her most recent book is The New York Times on Emerging Democracies in
Eastern Europe (Washington, D.C.: TimesReference and CQ Press/Sage, 2009),
chronicling the nonviolent transitions that took place in Poland, Hungary, East
Germany, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic states, Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine in the late
1980s and early 1990s. She is the author of the highly acclaimed A Quiet
Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance (New
York: Nation Books, 2007; London: Perseus Books, 2008), which examines crucial
aspects of the uprising overlooked, missed, or misunderstood by the media,
government officials, and academicians. In 1988, she won a Robert F. Kennedy
Memorial Book Award for Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil
Rights Movement (New York: William Morrow, 1987), in which she tells of her life-
defining experiences working for four years with the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Her involvement with SNCC led her to work
alongside the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (no relation) and other prominent
figures in the movement. In 2002, New Delhi’s Indian Council for Cultural Relations
and Mehta Publishers released the second edition of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin
Luther King, Jr (originally published by UNESCO in 1999), in which King
discusses nine contemporary nonviolent struggles.
During the civil rights movement, King and her colleague Casey Hayden (Sandra
Cason) turned their attention to women and co-authored “Sex and Caste,” a 1966
article now viewed by historians as tinder for the second wave of feminism. As a
presidential appointee in the administration of President Jimmy Carter, King directed
the worldwide operations of the Peace Corps and national volunteer service corps
programs in the United States. She continues to work with Carter as a special
adviser. King’s vocation over the years has brought her into working contact with
heads of state and government ministers of more than 120 developing countries.
In 1989, King’s alma mater Ohio Wesleyan University gave her its highest honor, the
award for distinguished achievement. In 2003 in Mumbai, she received the Jamnalal
Bajaj International Prize, named for the silent financial backer of Gandhi and
awarded for the promotion of Gandhian values. With this acknowledgment of her
work, she joined the ranks of such fellow prize winners as Archbishop Emeritus
Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Professor Sir Joseph Rotblat of the United
Kingdom, and Professor Johan Galtung of Norway. She was awarded the 2009 El-
Hibri Peace Education Prize for outstanding leadership in the practice of nonviolent
action and in the field of peace education for her contributions toward social justice in
the Middle East.
King holds a doctorate in international politics from the University of Wales at
Aberystwyth. With the assistance of a grant from the United States Institute of
Peace, she is currently researching the mechanisms of change in nonviolent civil
resistance through a case study of the Indian struggle against untouchability in
Vykom, Kerala, India, during 1924–1925.
Mary resides with her husband, Dr. Peter G. Bourne, in Washington, DC in the
United States and Wales in the United Kingdom.
Eastern Europe (Washington, D.C.: TimesReference and CQ Press/Sage, 2009),
chronicling the nonviolent transitions that took place in Poland, Hungary, East
Germany, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic states, Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine in the late
1980s and early 1990s. She is the author of the highly acclaimed A Quiet
Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance (New
York: Nation Books, 2007; London: Perseus Books, 2008), which examines crucial
aspects of the uprising overlooked, missed, or misunderstood by the media,
government officials, and academicians. In 1988, she won a Robert F. Kennedy
Memorial Book Award for Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil
Rights Movement (New York: William Morrow, 1987), in which she tells of her life-
defining experiences working for four years with the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Her involvement with SNCC led her to work
alongside the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (no relation) and other prominent
figures in the movement. In 2002, New Delhi’s Indian Council for Cultural Relations
and Mehta Publishers released the second edition of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin
Luther King, Jr (originally published by UNESCO in 1999), in which King
discusses nine contemporary nonviolent struggles.
During the civil rights movement, King and her colleague Casey Hayden (Sandra
Cason) turned their attention to women and co-authored “Sex and Caste,” a 1966
article now viewed by historians as tinder for the second wave of feminism. As a
presidential appointee in the administration of President Jimmy Carter, King directed
the worldwide operations of the Peace Corps and national volunteer service corps
programs in the United States. She continues to work with Carter as a special
adviser. King’s vocation over the years has brought her into working contact with
heads of state and government ministers of more than 120 developing countries.
In 1989, King’s alma mater Ohio Wesleyan University gave her its highest honor, the
award for distinguished achievement. In 2003 in Mumbai, she received the Jamnalal
Bajaj International Prize, named for the silent financial backer of Gandhi and
awarded for the promotion of Gandhian values. With this acknowledgment of her
work, she joined the ranks of such fellow prize winners as Archbishop Emeritus
Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Professor Sir Joseph Rotblat of the United
Kingdom, and Professor Johan Galtung of Norway. She was awarded the 2009 El-
Hibri Peace Education Prize for outstanding leadership in the practice of nonviolent
action and in the field of peace education for her contributions toward social justice in
the Middle East.
King holds a doctorate in international politics from the University of Wales at
Aberystwyth. With the assistance of a grant from the United States Institute of
Peace, she is currently researching the mechanisms of change in nonviolent civil
resistance through a case study of the Indian struggle against untouchability in
Vykom, Kerala, India, during 1924–1925.
Mary resides with her husband, Dr. Peter G. Bourne, in Washington, DC in the
United States and Wales in the United Kingdom.
Mary E. King
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Biography
Mary Elizabeth King is professor of peace and conflict studies
at the UN-affiliated University for Peace and holds the position
of distinguished scholar at the American University Center for
Global Peace, in Washington, D.C. She is also a Rothermere
American Institute Fellow at the University of Oxford, in the
United Kingdom.
Mary Elizabeth King is professor of peace and conflict studies
at the UN-affiliated University for Peace and holds the position
of distinguished scholar at the American University Center for
Global Peace, in Washington, D.C. She is also a Rothermere
American Institute Fellow at the University of Oxford, in the
United Kingdom.
| © Mary Elizabeth King 2006 - 2010. All rights reserved. |