Jackson Katz

Jackson Katz is an educator and activist working in the fields of violence, masculinity and media. Katz has been instrumental in several key organizations. Katz assisted in co-founding the Mentors in Violence Prevention organization as well as the affiliated association MVP Strategies. He served on the Task Force on Domestic Violence in the Military for the U.S. Secretary of Defence until 2003. Currently, Katz works for a gender violence prevention program in the Marine Corps.

Katz's key idea is the Bystander Approach, which shifts the attention of gender violence from a perpetrator-victim dichotomy to the role that institutions and complicit peers play in shaping violence. Katz acts as a consultant for the U.S. Air Force bystander intervention program.

Katz has also done extensive work on the pervasive concept of masculinity in media, popular culture, as well as in politics (specifically "presidential masculinities.") In 2006 he published 'The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help.' He also directed documentary films such as 'Tough Guise: Men, Violence and Crisis in Masculinity,' which the American Library Association named as a Top Ten Young Adult Video in 2000.