Jackson Katz, Ph.D., is an educator, author, and cultural theorist who is internationally renowned for his pioneering scholarship and activism on issues of gender, race and violence. In 1993 he co-founded the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program at Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society.
The mixed-gender, multiracial MVP program is one of the longest-running and most widely influential sexual assault and relationship abuse prevention programs in high schools, colleges, sports culture and the military in North America and beyond.
MVP introduced the “bystander” approach to the gender violence prevention field; Katz is one of the key architects of this now broadly popular approach.
In 1997 Katz founded MVP Strategies, which provides sexual harassment and gender violence prevention leadership training to institutions in the public and private sectors.
Also in 1997 Katz created and directed the first worldwide gender violence prevention program in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps. He and his colleagues have been centrally involved in the development and implementation of system-wide gender violence prevention training in the U.S. Air Force and Navy. MVP has also worked extensively on U.S. Army bases in the States and overseas in Iraq.
Jackson Katz
American Educator and CEO
Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP)
Jackson Katz, Ph.D., is an educator, author, and social theorist who is internationally renowned for his pioneering scholarship and activism on issues of gender, race and violence. He has long been a major figure and thought leader in the growing global movement of men working to promote gender equality and prevent gender violence. He is co-founder of Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP), one of the longest-running and most widely influential gender violence prevention programs in North America, and the first major program of its kind in the sports culture and the military. MVP introduced the “bystander” approach to the sexual assault and relationship abuse fields; Katz is a key architect of this now broadly popular strategy.
From 2000-2003 he served on the U.S. Secretary of Defense’s Task Force on Domestic Violence in the Military, and over the years he has served as subject matter expert on numerous state and federal projects in the area of gender violence prevention education.
Katz’s award-winning educational videos Tough Guise and Tough Guise 2, his featured appearances in the films Wrestling With Manhood, Spin The Bottle, Miss Representation and The Mask You Live In, and his thousands of lectures in North America and overseas have brought his insights into issues of gender and violence to millions of college and high school students as well as professionals in education, human services, public health and law enforcement.
His TED talk, “Violence Against Women-it’s a Men’s Issue,” has been viewed nearly four million times. He is the author of an influential book entitled The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help, and the critically acclaimed Man Enough? Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and the Politics of Presidential Masculinity. Man Enough won a bronze prize in Foreword Reviews’ Indie Awards for political science books in 2016.
Katz is a celebrated public speaker who lectures extensively in the U.S. and around the world on topics related to gender-based violence and other forms of interpersonal abuse and harassment, with special focus on the role of media, social norms, and institutional and cultural leadership in the shaping of multiracial, multinational masculinities.
Since 1990, he has presented at over 2700 colleges and universities, prep schools, high schools, middle schools, professional conferences and military installations in all 50 states, eight Canadian provinces, and on six continents, including multiple countries in Europe and Asia.
He holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, a Masters from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a Ph.D. in cultural studies and education from UCLA.
“Some of the proudest moments in the history of this country are grounded in the principle that members of dominant groups have a critical role to play in the struggle for equality.” “In corporate culture, in sports culture, in the media, we honor those who win at all costs.”