Michael Nagler is one of the most respected scholars and advocates of nonviolence worldwide. He is Professor Emeritus of Classics and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he founded the Peace and Confl ict Studies Program, now one of the largest of its kind in North America. He also is founder and president of the Metta Center for Nonviolence and the author of Our Spiritual Crisis and The Search for a Nonviolent Future, which received a 2002 American Book Award and has been translated into several languages. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere and he has spoken and written about nonviolence, meditation, and world peace for more than thirty years. He is chairman of the board of PeaceWorkers and was among the early founders of Nonviolent Peaceforce, now a global nonviolent peacekeeping service that has operated or is at work in Mindanao, Sri Lanka, South Sudan, and many other dangerous locales to “protect human life and promote human rights” as an impartial third party committed to nonviolent methods.

Michael’s main work today, however, is with the Metta Center for Nonviolence, which he cofounded in 1982. Metta produces books, fi lms, blog posts, and other materials as well as developing and maintaining the Roadmap model for an integrated nonviolent strategy, conducting retreats, and taking to the airwaves with Peace Paradigm Radio, broadcasting biweekly from KWMR in Point Reyes, California.

Among other awards, Michael received the 2007 Jamnalal Bajaj International Award for Promoting Gandhian Values Outside India.

Michael is a student of Sri Eknath Easwaran, founder of the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation (easwaran.org). He has lived at the center’s ashram in Marin County since 1970 and is a presenter for their programs of passage meditation.