- Ted Robert Gurr
Ted Robert Gurr (born Spokane, WA, 1936; Ph.D.
New York University 1965) is one of the world’s leading authorities on political conflict and instability. His book Why Men Rebel (1970) emphasized the importance of social psychological factors (relative deprivation) and ideology as root sources of political violence. It has been widely translated, most recently into Arabic and Russian. He is Distinguished University Professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and continues to consult on projects he established there.Career
Before joining the University of Maryland faculty in 1989 Prof. Gurr held academic positions at
Princeton University (1965-69),Northwestern University (1970-83, where he was Payson S. Wild Professor and chair of the political science department 1977-80); and the University of Colorado (1984-88).In 1968 Professor Gurr was asked to join the staff of the
National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence , established by President Lyndon Johnson after the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. He teamed with historian Hugh Davis Graham to prepare the 1969 report Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, which was widely publicized and published in many editions.The Polity study, begun by Professor Gurr in the late 1960s, profiles the democratic and autocratic traits of all regimes world-wide from 1800 to the present. The project is now directed by Prof. Monty G. Marshall of
George Mason University , one of the two dozen Ph.D.’s whose doctoral work he has supervised. The Polity data is widely used by researchers and government agencies to trackdemocratization and to assess the stability of contemporary regimes.The
Minorities at Risk project, which he began in 1985, assesses the political status and activities of more than 300 ethnic and religious minorities world-wide. The MAR project, which is continued by a research team at the University of Maryland, provides data for his and others’ analyses of the causes and management of ethnopolitical protest and rebellion, most recently in Peoples versus States: Minorities at Risk in the New Century (2000) and Ethnic Conflict in World Politics (2003), co-authored with Prof. Barbara Harff.In 1994-95 Professor Gurr helped establish the State Failure (now Political Instability) Task Force, at the request of Vice President Gore’s office, to provide global risk assessments of impending intrastate conflicts. He continues to serve as senior consultant to the Task Force under the George W. Bush Administration.
Since 2001 Professor Gurr has been a member of a network of scholars concerned with risks and prevention of
genocide , and participated in the 2004 Stockholm International Forum on the Prevention of Genocide, an international conference hosted by the Foreign Ministry of Sweden. In 2002 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by theUniversity of Sofia , Bulgaria. In 2004-05 he organized a workshop on economic roots of terrorism for the Club de Madrid’s International Summit onDemocracy ,Terrorism andSecurity , which was convened by the Spanish Foreign Ministry to commemorate the first anniversary of theMadrid train bombings in March 2004.His current projects include periodic assessments of risks of genocide and
politicide , with Barbara Harff; and a comparative study of “unholy alliances” between terrorists and international criminal networks, with Prof. Lyubov Mincheva of the University of Sofia.Publications, Honors
Prof. Gurr has written or edited more than twenty books and monographs. The latest is Peace and Conflict 2008, with University of Maryland co-authors Profs. Joseph Hewitt and Jonathan Wilkenfeld. He and Monty G. Marshall established this biennial report series in 2001 to provide scholars, analysts and journalists with current information on global conflict trends and risks of future instability. Earlier editions documented the global decline in internal wars during the 1990s and the ascendancy of negotiated agreements for managing ethnic and other internal conflicts.
Professor Gurr has held a
Guggenheim Fellowship (1972-73), a Fulbright Senior Fellowship (Australia, 1981-82), and aUS Institute of Peace Fellowship (1988-89). In 1993-94 he was president of theInternational Studies Association , an international body of 3000+ scholars and policy makers. In 1996-97 he held the Swedish government’s Olof Palme Visiting Professorship at theUniversity of Uppsala .External links
[http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/gurr/ University of Maryland]
[http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/mar/ Minorities at Risk Project]
[http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/polity/ Polity IV Project]
[http://globalpolicy.gmu.edu/pitf/ Political Instability Task Force]
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