Marc Gopin, Ph.D., is the James H. Laue Professor of World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution and the director of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.
Dr. Gopin has engaged for decades in the practice of conflict resolution, citizen diplomacy, and support for the victims of war. He has pioneered peacebuilding work from Syria and Israel to Iran and Afghanistan, focused on uplifting the voices of religious and secular peacebuilders from all sides of complex violent conflicts. Gopin has trained thousands of students in conflict healing and peacebuilding where complex cultural, religious, and psychosocial elements play a key role. This work is embodied in undergraduate and graduate intensive practice courses visiting conflict zones from Israel and Palestine to Turkey, Jordan, Bosnia, and Northern Ireland. Multimillion dollar interventions from Iran to Afghanistan, but especially for Syria, have promoted civil society support in multifaith contexts, skills of emotional recovery, conflict healing, moral reasoning, and compassion-based practices, especially focused on women’s empowerment. Gopin’s American antiracism work has been focused on support for multiracial relationship building among police chiefs and officers, as well as among citizens in key cities, with a focus on in-depth exploration of best practices of moral reasoning in dangerous situations, alongside compassion, healing, and reconciliation.
Dr. Gopin is the author of Compassionate Reasoning: Changing the Mind to Change the World (Oxford University Press), which presents the case for compassionate reasoning as a moral and psychosocial skill for the positive transformation of individuals and societies. Compassionate Reasoning synthesizes classical schools of ethics with compassion neuroscience, public health methodologies, and positive psychological approaches to social change. This is the culmination of prior research including published works such as Compassionate Judaism: The Life and Thought of Samuel David Luzzatto; Healing the Heart of Conflict: Eight Crucial Steps to Making Peace with Yourself and with Others; Bridges Across an Impossible Divide: The Inner Lives of Arab and Jewish Peacemakers; To Make the Earth Whole: Citizen Diplomacy in the Age of Religious Militancy; Holy War, Holy Peace: How Religion can Bring Peace to the Middle East; and Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence and Peacemaking.
Dr. Gopin has advised and lectured on conflict prevention and peacebuilding at the World Economic Forum, the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Foreign Service Institute, the U.S. Naval Academy, Air Force Academy, Fort Jackson, various other United States agencies, institutions in Switzerland, Ireland, India, Syria, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, and Israel, as well as at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Princeton. He has appeared on television and radio programs in outlets such as CNN, The Jim Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, and Voice of America. He has been published in the International Herald Tribune, the Boston Globe, and the Christian Science Monitor, and his work has been featured in news stories of the Times of London, the Times of India, Associated Press, and Newhouse News Service.
Dr. Gopin is the creator and principal author of marcgopin.com, as well as the podcast Making Change. He holds a Ph.D. in ethics from Brandeis University.
