Joseph V. Montville

Joseph V. Montville is the director of the Program on Healing Historical Memory at George Mason University's School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. Mr. Montville founded the preventive diplomacy program at Washington, D.C.'s Center for Strategic and International Studies in 1994 and directed it until 2003. Before that he spent 23 years as a diplomat with posts in the Middle East and North Africa. He also worked in the State Department's Bureaus of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs and Intelligence and Research, where he was chief of the Near East Division and director of the Office of Global Issues. He defined the concept of "Track Two" unofficial diplomacy. Educated at Lehigh, Harvard and Columbia universities, Mr. Montville has edited several books and written numerous articles and book chapters on religious and ethnic conflict resolution from a political psychology perspective. In 2008, the International Society of Political Psychology gave Mr. Montville its Nevitt Sanford Award for "distinguished professional contribution to political psychology" at its 31st annual scientific meeting in Paris.