Diane Levin

She helped develop a specialty in the Graduate School on media literacy and co-founded an annual summer institute on "Media Literacy in a Violent Society." She has a B.S. in Child Development from Cornell, a M.S. in Special Education from Wheelock and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Child Development and Sociology from Tufts University.

For twenty years, Dr. Levin has studied how violence in society and the media culture influence children's development, behavior and play and how they contribute to children's socialization into a culture of violence. Her efforts also focus on helping parents and teachers figure out how to counteract the hazards of media culture and break the cycle of violence in children's lives as well as identifying what the wider society can do to promote healthy development and non-violence.

In addition to having published many articles, Dr. Levin is the author of two books, Remote Control Childhood? Combating the Hazards of Media Culture and Teaching Young Children in Violent Times: Building a Peaceable Classroom. She has also co-authored four books with Nancy Carlsson-Paige including, Before Push Comes to Shove: Building Conflict Resolution Skills with Children; Who's Calling the Shots? How to Respond Effectively to Children's Fascination with War Play, War Toys, and Violent TV and The War Play Dilemma.

Dr. Levin is a founder of TRUCE (Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children's Entertainment), An advocacy group to help parents deal with the stresses created by media culture. She is also a member of the Massachusetts Violence Prevention Task Force and on several advisory boards including that of the Public Broadcasting System/Ready to Learn Family Magazine. She was the founding director of the Early Childhood Peaceable Classroom Project at Educators for Social Responsibility and has served on the National Association for the Education of Young Children's Panel on Violence in the Lives of Children and Families. She has consulted with the New York State Task Force on Violence Prevention in schools and the American Psychological Association's Early Childhood Violence Prevention Project. She has testified before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee on "Marketing Violence to Children" and lectured widely in the United States and abroad. Her work has been covered extensively in the media.