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Lawrence S. Wittner (born May 5, 1941 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American historian who has written extensively on peace movements, foreign policy, and economic inequality.
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Lawrence S. Wittner (born May 5, 1941 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American historian who has written extensively on peace movements, foreign policy, and economic inequality.
He attended Columbia College (B.A., 1962), the University of Wisconsin (M.A. in history, 1963), and Columbia University (Ph.D. in history, 1967). Subsequently, he taught at Hampton Institute, at Vassar College, and—under the Fulbright program—at Japanese universities. In 1974, he began teaching at the State University of New York at Albany, where he rose to the rank of Professor of History before his retirement in 2010.
Wittner is the author of nine books, the editor or co-editor of another four, and the author of approximately 400 published articles and book reviews. From 1984 to 1987, he edited Peace & Change, a journal of peace research. His article "Peace Movements and Foreign Policy" won the Charles DeBenedetti award of the Conference on Peace Research in History in 1989, and his One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement Through 1953 received the Warren Kuehl Book Prize of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in 1995. He received the New York State/United University Professions Excellence Award for scholarship, teaching, and service in 1990 and the Peace History Society's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.
A former president of the Council on Peace Research in History (now the Peace History Society), an affiliate of the American Historical Association, Wittner also chaired the Peace History Commission of the International Peace Research Association.
He has received major fellowships or grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Aspen Institute, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the United States Institute of Peace.
Wittner has spoken at the United Nations and at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, delivered guest lectures on dozens of college and university campuses (including Princeton University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Yale University, Harvard University, Rutgers University, the University of Colorado, the University of Wisconsin, American University, the University of Maine, the University of Connecticut, the University of Utah, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of New Mexico, Swarthmore College, the College of William and Mary, Colgate University, and the University of Alaska Southeast), and given talks in numerous countries (including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Japan, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain, and Switzerland).
Wittner emerged as a prominent activist of the anti-nuclear movement. He claims that the public protests of the anti-nuclear movement thwarted plans to build a neutron bomb and triggered the nuclear disarmament track, starting with the NATO Double-Track Decision. [1]
Nuclear disarmament is the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons. Its end state can also be a nuclear-weapons-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated. The term denuclearization is also used to describe the process leading to complete nuclear disarmament.
The World Peace Council (WPC) is an international organization created in 1949 by the Cominform and propped up by the Soviet Union. Throughout the Cold War, WPC engaged in propaganda efforts on behalf of the Soviet Union, whereby it criticized the United States and its allies while defending the Soviet Union's involvement in numerous conflicts.
European Nuclear Disarmament (END) was a Europe-wide movement for a "nuclear-free Europe from Poland to Portugal” that put on annual European Nuclear Disarmament conventions from 1982 to 1991.
The Plowshares movement is an anti-nuclear weapons and Christian pacifist movement that advocates active resistance to war. The group often practices a form of protest that involves the damaging of weapons and military property. The movement gained notoriety in the early 1980s when several members damaged nuclear warhead nose cones and were subsequently convicted. The name refers to the text of prophet Isaiah who said that swords shall be beaten into plowshares.
Glen Harold Stassen was an American ethicist and Baptist theologian. He was known for his work on theological ethics, political philosophy, and social justice and for developing the Just Peacemaking Theory regarding the comparative ethics of war and peace. Glen Stassen helped define the social justice wing of the Christian evangelical movement in America. Stassen died in Pasadena, California at the age of 78. He was the son of former Minnesota governor Harold Stassen. His work pushed the advancement of nuclear disarmament in America. The last project he was committed to before his death was the destruction of chemical weapons, according to his blog.
William Reed Huntington (1907–1990) was an American architect who represented the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) to the United Nations. He directed a program outlining the AFSC.
Dr. Randall Caroline Forsberg led a lifetime of research and advocacy on ways to reduce the risk of war, minimize the burden of military spending, and promote democratic institutions. Her career started at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in 1968. In 1974 she moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to found the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies (IDDS) as well as to launch the national Nuclear Freeze campaign.
David Cortright is an American scholar and peace activist. He is a Vietnam veteran who is currently Professor Emeritus and special adviser for policy studies at the Keough School of Global Affairs and Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 22 books. Cortright has a long history of public advocacy for disarmament and the prevention of war.
Anti-nuclear organizations may oppose uranium mining, nuclear power, and/or nuclear weapons. Anti-nuclear groups have undertaken public protests and acts of civil disobedience which have included occupations of nuclear plant sites. Some of the most influential groups in the anti-nuclear movement have had members who were elite scientists, including several Nobel Laureates and many nuclear physicists.
A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world peace. Some of the methods used to achieve these goals include advocacy of pacifism, nonviolent resistance, diplomacy, boycotts, peace camps, ethical consumerism, supporting anti-war political candidates, supporting legislation to remove profits from government contracts to the military–industrial complex, banning guns, creating tools for open government and transparency, direct democracy, supporting whistleblowers who expose war crimes or conspiracies to create wars, demonstrations, and political lobbying. The political cooperative is an example of an organization which seeks to merge all peace-movement and green organizations; they may have diverse goals, but have the common ideal of peace and humane sustainability. A concern of some peace activists is the challenge of attaining peace when those against peace often use violence as their means of communication and empowerment.
Donald James Hughes was an American nuclear physicist, chiefly notable as one of the signers off the Franck Report in June, 1945, recommending that the United States not use the atomic bomb as a weapon to prompt the surrender of Japan in World War II.
The Soviet Peace Committee was a state-sponsored organization responsible for coordinating peace movements active in the Soviet Union. It was founded in 1949 and existed until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
George Willoughby was a Quaker activist who advocated for world peace, and conducted nonviolent protests against war and preparations for war.
The application of nuclear technology, both as a source of energy and as an instrument of war, has been controversial.
American Peace Crusade (APC) was an American peace advocacy organization. Established during the Korean War, the federal government identified the organization as a Communist front. Pitirim Sorokin, a Russian American sociologist and professor at Harvard University, was a sponsor of this organization. The Guide to Subversive Organizations and Publications published by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) characterized APC as a group formed by the Communists to function "as a new instrument for their 'peace' offensive in the United States."
The International Day against Nuclear Tests is observed on August 29. It was established on December 2, 2009, at the 64th session of the United Nations General Assembly by the resolution 64/35, which was adopted unanimously.
Marian Emily Cripps, Baroness Parmoor was a British anti-war activist.
The Nuclear Freeze campaign was a mass movement in the United States during the 1980s to secure an agreement between the U.S. and Soviet governments to halt the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons.
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