Janice Gross Stein

Professor Janice Stein "is Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management and Negotiation in the Department of Political Science and the Director of the Munk Centre for International Studies. She has an international reputation as a Middle East area specialist of the first rank. She is a pioneer in at least three sub-fields of political science: negotiation theory; foreign policy decision-making; and international conflict and conflict management.

"Her first book Rational Decision Making: Israel's Security Choices, 1967 (1980) used Israel's decision to go to war in 1967 as a case study to test three contrasting models of decision-making. It won the prestigious Edgar Furniss Award of the Mershon Centre for making an outstanding contribution to the study of national security and civilian military education.

"Professor Stein was the first scholar to establish the pivotal importance of prenegotiation to bargaining. In Getting to the Table (1989), she articulated the connection between the negotiation of the terms of negotiation itself, and its ultimate success or failure. In the field of foreign-policy decision-making, Professor Stein has critically reevaluated the assumptions and theories that lie at the core of the prevention and management of international conflict. Specifically, she has demonstrated that beliefs about rationality and the efficacy of deterrence can have the paradoxical and unintentional effect of leading states into conflict, precisely in cases where they are intended to help states avoid it. Some of Professor Stein's many publications include Choosing to Cooperate: How States Avoid Loss (1991); as co-author, We All Lost the Cold War (1994); Powder Keg in the Middle East: The Struggle for Gulf Security (1995) and Knowledge Networks: Collaborative Innovations in International Learning. Professor Stein's most recent book, The Cult of Efficiency, was nominated by the Writer's Trust of Canada for the Shaughnessy-Cohen Prize in Political Writing, by the Canadian Political Science Association for the Donald Smilie Prize, and for the Pearson Readers' Choice Book Award. With David Cameron, Dr. Stein is also the editor of a new collection of essays, Street Protests and Fantasy Parks. In 2001, Professor Stein was the University of Toronto's Massey Lecturer.

"Professor Stein is well-known and in demand in Canadian, American and Middle Eastern policy circles. She has advised the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the United States Institute for Peace. In Canada, Professor Stein has been Chair of the Research Advisory Board to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Chair of the Advisory Board to the Canadian Centre for Foreign Policy Development."