Tatsushi Arai
PhD, George Mason University
MA, Monterey Institute of International Studies
BA, Waseda University, Japan
Associate Professor, Conflict Transformation
Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Management
Tatsushi (Tats) Arai is associate professor of conflict transformation at SIT Graduate Institute. He received his PhD in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University, where he taught conflict theories and cultural dimensions of public policymaking before joining SIT in 2006. Previously, Tats taught international relations at the National University of Rwanda in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide.
As a trainer, mediator, and dialogue facilitator, Tats has led a number of peacebuilding workshops for government personnel, members of international organizations, and civil society leaders from around the world, especially the Middle East, the African Great Lakes, East and South Asia, and North America. His most recent activities include field research in Pakistan and public speaking and dialogues aimed at transforming the underlying discourse of the war on terror in the West, as well as the growing networks of organized militancy in the Afghan-Pakistan context. Tats also serves as a dialogue facilitator of Strait Talk, a series of semi-annual conflict resolution dialogues aimed at fostering a new generation of peacebuilders from Taiwan, Mainland China, and the United States.
Outside the SIT context, Tats is a research fellow of the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research in Hawaii; an advisor to Global Majority, a California-based international peacebuilding NGO; and a member of TRANSCEND, a global network for peace and development practitioners.
Tats’s current research focuses on comparative peacemaking across regional contexts and the trans-generational effects of cultural and structural factors that promote war and peace. His publications include Creativity and Conflict Resolution: Alternative Pathways to Peace (Routledge, 2009), and chapters in Conflict across Cultures: A Unique Experience of Bridging Differences (Intercultural Press, 2006).
Tats is a Japanese citizen. He travels widely across continents, and enjoys cross-cultural encounters beyond his vocational commitment, including his own tri-national family in Massachusetts.
