“This method may appear to be long, perhaps too long, but I am convinced that it is the shortest.” ~ Gandhi, “Amrita Bazar Patrika,” September 17, 1933
In 2013, political scientist Erica Chenoweth was named among 100 top global researchers by Foreign Policy magazine for “proving Gandhi right.” In Why Civil Resistance Works, a groundbreaking, myth-shattering, quantitative research-based book she co-wrote with Maria Stephan, she shows that in her study of over 250 cases of nonviolent “transitions to democracy,” they actually work faster than violent movements in a 1:3 ratio! Some say that Gandhi knew this intuitively, that he just had a sense for nonviolence working, but we know better: he drew his conclusion experientially, through a long series of experiments and a keen insight into human nature.
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About Daily Metta
Stephanie Van Hook, the Metta Center’s executive director, launched Daily Metta in 2015 as a way to share Gandhi’s spiritual wisdom and experiments with nonviolence.
Our 2016 Daily Metta continues with Gandhi on weekdays. On weekends, we share videos that complement Michael Nagler’s award-winning book, The Search for a Nonviolent Future: A Promise of Peace for Ourselves, Our Families, and Our World. To help readers engage with the book more deeply, the Metta Center offers a free PDF study guide.
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Interesting, isn’t it, that it was women political scientists that wrote this book?