19 Facts About Gene Sharp

Gene Sharp was the founder of the Albert Einstein Institution, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the study of nonviolent action, and professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

Gene Sharp was known for his extensive writings on nonviolent struggle, which have influenced numerous anti-government resistance movements around the world.

Unofficial sources have claimed that Gene Sharp was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015, and had previously been nominated three times, in 2009,2012 and 2013.

Gene Sharp was widely considered the favorite for the 2012 award.

Gene Sharp was born in North Baltimore, Ohio, the son of an itinerant Protestant minister.

Gene Sharp received a Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences in 1949 from Ohio State University, where he received his Master of Arts in Sociology in 1951.

Gene Sharp discussed his decision to go to prison for his beliefs in letters to Albert Einstein, who wrote a foreword to his first book on Gandhi.

Gene Sharp was appointed a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in 1972.

Gene Sharp held research appointments at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs from 1965.

In 1983 Gene Sharp founded the Albert Einstein Institution, a non-profit organization devoted to studies and promotion of the use of nonviolent action in conflicts worldwide.

Gene Sharp died on January 28,2018, at home in Boston, having just turned 90.

Gene Sharp identifies this hidden structure as providing a window of opportunity for a population to cause significant change in a state.

Gene Sharp cites the insight of Etienne de La Boetie that if the subjects of a particular state recognize that they are the source of the state's power, they can refuse their obedience and their leader will be left without power.

Gene Sharp published Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential in 2005.

Gene Sharp's works remain the ideological underpinning of the work for the Serbian-based nonviolent conflict training group the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies which helped to train the key activists in the protest movement that toppled President Mubarak of Egypt, and many other earlier youth movements in the Eastern European color revolutions.

Gene Sharp defines the latter as having an ethical as well as a material dimension that Sharp deliberately avoids engaging with, and credits local circumstances and the spark provided by the Tunisian revolution for the Egyptian success.

The Associated Press reported as early as September 2010 more than four months before the revolution that Gene Sharp's work was being used by activists in Egypt close to political leader Mohamed ElBaradei.

Gene Sharp consistently denied these claims and, after a period of sustained attacks in June 2008, notable left wing writers Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, among others, defended Gene Sharp in a letter which was circulated by US and internationally based scholars and activists, including the statement,.

Anarchist Peter Gelderloos accuses Gene Sharp of overstating his theory's relevance to the 2011 Egyptian revolution for personal aggrandizement.