Mary Elizabeth King is professor of peace and conflict studies at the University for Peace, an affiliate of the United Nations. A political scientist, she is also distinguished scholar at the American University Center for Global Peace, Washington, D.C., and Rothermere American Institute Fellow, University of Oxford, Britain. She is a veteran of the U.S. civil rights movement and in 1988 won a Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award for her memoir, Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. She has spent her career studying collective nonviolent action in political conflicts, about which she has written extensively. Her latest book is A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance. Supported by the United States Institute of Peace, she is working on a study of a Gandhian struggle in India against untouchability during 1924-1925. In 2003 in Mumbai (Bombay), India, King was given the Jamnalal Bajaj International Award, which recognizes the promotion of Gandhian values.