Biography

Art joined the URI faculty in 1965 and is a co-founder of the Center for Nonviolence & Peace Studies. He has been named Professor Emeritus of Political Science.

Art innovated numerous courses at URI including, in the early 70s, the first class offered in the Ocean State focusing on nonviolence and peace-building. His most recent course taught in the Honors Program is “The Wisdom Traditions of the World Religions and Cultures: East and West.”

Art grew up in Philipsburg, PA, and completed his undergraduate studies at Pennsylvania State University. As a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and received an interdisciplinary PhD in International Relations in 1965. His graduate studies abroad included a Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and a doctoral research fellowship in India. While journeying back to the US in 1963-64, Art visited over 25 countries, often staying in family homes of fellow students with whom he had become friends while living abroad.

Upon Art’s joining URI’s Department of Political Science, he developed the course on Nonviolence and Social Change. Active as a teacher in the University’s Honors program, he co-facilitated a year-long colloquium, “Creativity and the Human Spirit.” (1977-78), and the 2000 colloquium, “Nonviolence: Legacies of the Past, Bridges to the Future.” In recognition of his teaching and community service within and beyond the classroom, the 1986 URI Foundation Teaching Award cited his “commitment to human rights and concern for the environment which has inspired thousands of URI students over the years.”

At URI Art served as a Fellow within several programs, including the Honors Program, Multicultural Center, J. H. White for Ethics and Public Policy, and the Feinstein Community Service Center. Internationally, Art has spoken at professional conferences and given workshops on peace-building and nonviolence education on every continent. He has been a facilitator and given presentations at each of the five major international Parliaments of the World’s Religions: Chicago (1993), Capetown (1999), Barcelona (2004), Melbourne (2009), and Salt Lake City (2015).

Recognizing his 50 years of service at URI in helping build what Martin Luther King, Jr. called the “beloved community,” Art was the 2007 recipient of both the Peacemaker Award and the Multicultural Center’s Faculty Excellence Award. An ongoing “Art Stein Endowed Fund in Nonviolence & Peace Studies” was created in 2008 to support students who share his commitment for peace education, social justice, and human unity.

His various interests in such areas as ethnic, racial, and international reconciliation, nonviolent socio-political change, comparative religions, and inner peace-building are included in books such as India and the Soviet Union: The Nehru Era; Bittersweet Encounter: the Afro-American and the American Jew; Seeds of the Seventies: Values, Work and Commitment in Post-Vietnam America, and Kirpal Singh: The Spiritual Path. Art’s most recent book is a collaboration with longtime friend, Andrew Vidich, Let There Be Light: Experiencing Inner Light Across the World’s Sacvred Traditions (Amazon, 2016)

The co-authors shared about Let There Be Light: “The conception for the book first grew out of our shared interests in world religions and cultures, meditation and spirituality, the mystic traditions, interfaith dialogue and peace-building from the personal to the global level. Our working together has been like being on a shared journey which has provided many new insights and perspectives, and deepened our understanding of some very profound questions.”

Articles and other writings by Art were published between 1963-2009 in journals such as Phoenix, Journal of Transpersonal Anthropology, Fellowship in Prayer, New Options, Judaism, American Political Science Review, Peacehaven: Quarterly for Human Fulfillment, Northeast Journal, The Great Swamp Gazette, Asian Survey, Sat Sandesh (Pathways to Truth), Zygon: Journal of Science and Relgions, Gandhi Marg, Journal of Asian Studies, Integral Explorations: Journal of Culture and Consciousness, The Sun, Patterns of Prejudice, and Manas.