Paul Joseph

Paul Joseph is a political sociologist with a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1975). His research specialty is the politics surrounding foreign and defense policy, and especially the impact of public opinion and peace movements on policy outcomes. His books include a decision-making study on the Vietnam War, the debate over nuclear policy, and the security implications of the end of the Cold War. In Are Americans Becoming More Peaceful? he explores the influence of new public sensitivities toward the costs of war on the Bush administration’s management of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He has investigated “human terrain teams,” the social scientists who were embedded in combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan, and served as General Editor of the Encyclopedia of War: Social Science Perspectives (Sage Publishers). He has also published articles, review essays, and encyclopedia entries on race and class in the United States, on Maori-Pakeha (European) relations in New Zealand, the memory politics surrounding Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the influence of peace movements on government policies. He was for many years the director of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at Tufts University, and served two terms as president of the national Peace Studies Association. He has lectured in more than a dozen countries, served as guest curator for a Tufts Art Gallery exhibition based on the materials provided by peace museums in Japan, and experimented with video conferencing technology to develop co-curriculum with the Naval Academy and West Point. His teaching interests include war and peace, globalization, and political sociology, and he was recognized by Tufts University with both the Lillian Liebner Award for Teaching and Guidance and the Seymour Smiches Award for Distinguished Teaching and Advising. He enjoys travel, sports, cooking, and the outdoors.