Biographical Information

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

Jackson Katz is the founder and director of MVP Strategies, an organization that provides gender violence prevention training and materials to U.S. colleges, high schools, law enforcement agencies, the U.S. military services, community organizations, and small and large corporations.

He is the creator of an award-winning videos for college and high school students. These include Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity (2000); Wrestling With Manhood, with Sut Jhally,(2002); and Spin the Bottle: Sex, Lies, and Alcohol, with Jean Kilbourne, (2004). These videos - with accompanying study guides - are available from the Media Education Foundation.

In 1993 he co-created the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) Program at Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society. The multi-racial, mixed gender MVP program is the first large-scale attempt to enlist high school, collegiate, and professional athletes in the fight against all forms of men's violence against women. MVP has worked with tens of thousands of high school students, as well as thousands of student-athletes and other student leaders at over 100 colleges and universities nationally. Since 1997, Katz and other MVP staff have trained coaches, players, and front office personnel of the New England Patriots Football Club. Katz is the primary author of the program's innovative teaching materials.

Since 1996 he has been directing MVP-MC, the first worldwide gender violence prevention program in the history of the United States Marine Corps. He and his colleagues have trained thousands of Marines on a dozen bases in the U.S. and Japan. Katz has also worked with personnel from the United States Navy, Air Force, Army, and Coast Guard.

Katz was a member of the U.S. Secretary of Defense's Task Force on Domestic Violence in the military from 2000-2003.

Since 1990, Katz has lectured at more than 800 colleges, prep schools, high schools, middle schools, professional conferences and military installations in 43 states. He has spoken and done trainings at numerous public schools and community organizations across the country.

From 1988 to 1998, Katz was the chief organizer for Real Men, the Boston-based anti-sexist men's organization. Real Men leafleted at Fenway Park and Andrew Dice Clay concerts, provided speakers, sponsored debates and conferences, held fundraisers for battered women's shelters, and produced and distributed literature.

From 1998-2000, he served on the American Bar Association's Commission on Domestic Violence.

He has consulted for nearly a decade with the Liz Claiborne Company's award-winning Women's Work campaign.

He has published several academic articles that are widely used in undergraduate and graduate courses. Topics include: educating college student-athletes in gender violence prevention, violent white masculinity in advertising, Eminem, men's leadership in gender violence prevention education K-12, juvenile detention, masculinities in media and the male sports culture.

Jackson Katz is widely quoted in the national print media. He has appeared on numerous national and local radio programs in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, as well as television programs such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America, Phil Donahue, Montel Williams, ABC News 20/20, and the CBS Evening News.

Katz is a former all-star football player who became the first man at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to earn a minor in women's studies. He holds a Master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where his research concentration was the social construction of violent masculinities through sports and media. He is currently a doctoral student at UCLA.