Tenzin Dorjee

Tenzin Dorjee is a Lecturer in the Discipline of Political Science at Columbia University, working in the international relations and comparative politics subfields. His research examines the influence of religious beliefs on political preferences and conflict behavior, and the links between transnational repression and political participation. He received his B.A. in international relations from Brown University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. His research and writings have been published by Foreign Affairs, Oxford Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, Journal of Democracy, Migration Information Source, Washington Post, China Brief, and the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. He is a Senior Researcher at Tibet Action Institute, the inaugural Stephanie G. Neuman Fellow (2021-2022) at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, and a Charlotte Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow (2023-2024) with the Institute for Citizens and Scholars.

In Fall 2024, he will be teaching an International Politics seminar on "The Art and Science of Civil Resistance" (POLS UN3961 Sec:010), which merges scholarly studies and activist perspectives to explore how nonviolent political change occurs. Civil resistance has been wielded by movements to topple authoritarian regimes, overthrow colonial rule, fight corporate exploitation, and advance minority rights. But how does nonviolent struggle actually work? When do nonviolent movements succeed and when do they fail? To what extent can nonviolent conflict be organized into a precise science, and to what extent is it a form of art that resists quantification and prediction? This course walks students through a range of writings by theorists as well as practitioners, from Gandhi to Gene Sharp, with a view to bridging the gap between the academic and applied literatures.