Mike Klein, Ed.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Justice and Peace Studies at the University of St. Thomas. He teaches undergraduate courses in Leadership for Social Justice, Qualitative Research, Introduction to Justice and Peace Studies; and seminars in art and social change, historical interpretation for contemporary justice, and coffee as lens for interdisciplinary analysis. He teaches graduate courses on social justice pedagogy, critical education in social movements, and the pedagogy of Paulo Freire. His research, publishing, and consulting focus on: democratizing leadership, peace education, popular culture, and peacebuilding. He develops the agency of students and communities to transform structures and to advance social justice. 

Klein is also an artist focused on community-based projects. He has worked with participants in a boxing and African dance program, a youth farm project, a multi-cultural immigrant community, an alternative high school, a Catholic elementary school, a crisis nursery, and a food program for people living with HIV/AIDS. Most recently, he has joined with Pillsbury United Communities for Guns in the Hands of Artists to question the role of guns in US culture by creating art from de-commissioned weapons.