This Week on Sprouts

The Effectiveness of Non-Violence

03.13.24

Produced by: Spencer Graves at KKFI Radio

Maria Stephan describes how you can more effectively advance a multi-racial democracy.

Stephan has collaborated with Erica Chenoweth in seminal research comparing the relative effectiveness of violence and nonviolence. They found that nonviolence on average advanced democracy, win or lose, while violence doesn’t.

Their 2011 book on “Why Civil Resistance Works” won the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award from the American Political Science Association in 2012 as the best book published in the U.S. during the previous calendar year on government, politics, or international affairs.

Not coincidentally, Chenoweth is now the Frank
Stanton Professor of the First Amendment and Academic Dean for Faculty Engagement at Harvard in recognition of the value of their work.

Stephan was interviewed by Spencer Graves with the Forum Committee of All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in Kansas City.

Creative Commons photo of Gandhi