Speaker Bios
Jackson Katz is an educator, author and filmmaker who is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work in gender violence prevention education with men and boys, particularly in the sports culture and the military.
In 1993, he founded the multi-racial, mixed-gender Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) Program, at Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society. MVP is the first large-scale attempt to enlist high school, collegiate and professional athletes in the fight against all forms of men's violence against women. Today, MVP is the most widely utilized gender violence prevention program in college and professional athletics. It has been implemented by about one-quarter of the teams in the NFL, including the New England Patriots, as well as the Boston Red Sox and a growing number of Major League Baseball clubs.
Since 1997 Katz has been directing the first worldwide gender violence prevention program in the history of the United States Marine Corps. From 2000-2003, he was a member of the Secretary of Defense's Task Force on Domestic Violence in the Military.
Katz is the creator of an award-winning and widely used educational video for college and high school students, entitled "Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity."
Tough Guise was named one of the top ten young adult videos for 2000 by the American Library Association. Tough Guise 2 is scheduled for release in early 2007. His second video, “Wrestling With Manhood,” a collaboration with Sut Jhally, was released in 2002 by the Media Education Foundation. His third video, with Jean Kilbourne, is entitled “Spin The Bottle: Sex, Lies and Alcohol.” It was released in 2004.
Jackson Katz has published extensively in academic journals and popular newspapers. His first book, entitled “The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help,” was published earlier this year by Sourcebooks. He is frequently quoted in the national media, and has appeared on numerous radio programs in the U.S., Canada and Australia, as well as TV programs such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, Lifetime Television, Good Morning America, Montel Williams, the CBS Evening News, MSNBC and ABC News 20/20.
Katz, a former high school football star, became the first man at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst to earn a minor in women’s studies. He holds a masters degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and is currently a doctoral student in cultural studies at UCLA. A native of Boston, he lives with his family in the Los Angeles area.
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