Rudd became a member of the Columbia University chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1963. By 1968, he had emerged as a leader for Columbia's SDS chapter. During the 1968 Columbia University Protests, he served as spokesperson for dissident students protesting a variety of issues, particularly the Vietnam War. As the war escalated, Mark Rudd worked with other youth movement leaders to take SDS in a more militant direction. While much of the general membership of SDS refused to countenance violence, Rudd together with some other prominent SDS members formed a paramilitary organization inspired by the Red Guard, referring to themselves collectively as "Weatherman" after the lyrics from a famous Bob Dylansong.
Rudd went "underground" in 1970, hiding from law enforcement following the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion that killed three of his Weather Underground peers. He surrendered to authorities in 1977 and served a short jail sentence. He taught mathematics at Central New Mexico Community College, and retired in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rudd has since expressed regret for his role in the Weather Underground, and advocates for nonviolence and electoral change.[1]
Early life
Rudd was born in Irvington, New Jersey. His father, Jacob S. Rudd (1909–1995), was born Jacob Shmuel Rudnitsky in Stanislower, Poland; he was a former army officer who sold real estate in Maplewood, New Jersey. His mother, Bertha Bass (1912–2009), was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the year after her parents emigrated from Lithuania. Rudd had a brother, David R. Rudd (1939–2009), who became an attorney. His family was Jewish.[2] Rudd attended Columbia High School in his hometown of Maplewood, New Jersey, and later Columbia University in New York.[3]
He identified the Vietnam War as an imperialist war and first tried to stop the university's involvement in the war. He also supported the black power movement.[4] Rudd said they were protesting horrors like Agent Orange defoliation and the carpet bombing in Vietnam.[5] Mark Rudd's website says that his commitment to "fighting U.S imperialism"[6] was inspired by the revolutionary movement in Cuba, which at that time was in its ninth year.[7]
In 1968, Rudd and Bernardine Dohrn and other leaders of SDS were invited to Cuba to meet with Cuban, Soviet, and North Vietnamese delegates. His experiences in Cuba strengthened Rudd's anti-war and pro-Communist sentiments.[6] Rudd had described the life of Cuba as "extremely humanistic" and he idealized Ernesto "Che" Guevara, referring to him as the "Heroic Guerrilla."[8]
Once he returned from Cuba, Rudd was elected President of the Columbia chapter of SDS. In 1968, during his junior year, Rudd was expelled from Columbia after a series of sit-ins and riots that disrupted campus life and attracted nationwide attention. These events culminated in the dramatic occupation of several campus buildings, including the Administration building, Low Memorial Library, and which ended only after violent clashes between students and the New York Police Department.
The Columbia protest was not the first student revolt on an American campus, but as it occurred at a relatively conservative Ivy League school located just up the street from the headquarters of the nation's news media, it received considerable press coverage and drew many supporters. The protests produced the slogan "Create Two, Three, Many Columbias!" The Doonesbury character Mark Slackmeyer was inspired by Rudd.[9]
Revolutionary Youth Movement and Weather Underground
In 1969, as SDS membership grew rapidly, members' views concerning both goals and methods began to diverge widely. Rudd felt that SDS was not doing enough to protest the war in Vietnam. He was a leader of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM), a faction of SDS, which advocated a more militant course of action while other factions within SDS were becoming concerned about Rudd's increasingly vocal calls for violent confrontation and hardline Communist sentiments. The 1969 SDS convention effectively splintered and ended the organization. Rudd and other former RYM members ultimately formed Weatherman, a self-proclaimed "organization of communist women and men." The new organization was intent on overthrowing the government through violent actions. Spreading communism was a priority for the members of Weather, as when Rudd told other members of SDS, " Don't be timid about telling people we're Communist. Don't deny it, be proud of it."[10]
Years underground
Rudd and other members of Weatherman participated in an SDS National Action on October 8–11, 1969, an event which became known as the Days of Rage.[10] Charges filed against demonstrators following this action threatened the movement and its supporters. Rudd was demoted within the organization in January 1970.[11]
Rudd, along with other prominent members of Weather, went underground in March 1970 following the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, an incident in which three members of the organization died when an explosive device, intended for a servicemen's ball, detonated prematurely. The dead were Terry Robbins, Diana Oughton, and Ted Gold, who was Rudd's friend and partner in RYM and the Columbia sit-ins.
Weatherman had already come to the attention of the FBI, but this explosion caused the members of Weatherman to take further precautions and to engage in more clandestine operations and according to some Weatherman members like Bill Ayers, build an underground revolutionary movement. According to Kirkpatrick Sale, Rudd was regarded as arrogant and politically ignorant by the other leaders, and was further demoted in the organization by the end of the year.[12]
After the townhouse explosion, the government actively sought to apprehend Mark Rudd and twelve other members of the Weather Underground Organization (WUO).[13] For seven years Rudd lived underground, although he was disengaged from the WUO for most of that time.
Reappearance
On September 14, 1977, Rudd turned himself in to authorities, tired of life as a fugitive. He had been living and working under an assumed name just a few miles from the Columbia campus in Brooklyn and was increasingly frustrated over his lifestyle which included his inability to see his family as well as working in manual labor jobs beneath his education. Due to FBI abuses against Vietnam protestors and others during the COINTELPRO program, Rudd could not be convicted of many of the crimes alleged in the original government complaint against him that led to his fugitive status. He received a small fine and ultimately spent less than one year in jail for all his crimes. His first public appearance was on campus, where he spoke to a crowd of hundreds of admiring students. He was not the firebrand the crowd expected, but he did participate in a march around the campus after the speech.[14]
Later developments
Mark Rudd, speaking at the West End Bar on March 26, 2009.
In the summer of 1978, Rudd and his then-girlfriend, Sue LeGrand,[15] moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. During his time there he became an instructor of mathematics at Central New Mexico Community College (then known as the Albuquerque Technical Vocational Institute, or TVI). At the time he was hired and during his early employment at the college, Rudd's years as a student radical and Federal fugitive were almost unknown to his students and other faculty members who seldom asked if he was "that" Mark Rudd. Most of these individuals were of a different generation and the name "Mark Rudd" had ceased to be a household word. Rudd regarded this lack of critical attention with some disdain.[16]
In 1990, he published a memoir called Truth and Consequences: The Education of Mark Rudd, which detailed his life with SDS, the Columbia University riots, and his time as a fugitive.[17]
Rudd was interviewed for the 2002 documentary, The Weather Underground, in which he stated that although the group's motivations, to end the Vietnam War and to oppose US imperialism, were justified, the violent actions performed in pursuit of those beliefs were questionable. He was the only former Weather member featured in the film that regretted his involvement in the group.
Today Rudd lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife, Marla (Painter).[19] Rudd maintains a website called MarkRudd.com where he frequently posts essays and other writings, including his opinions on contemporary issues, and a personal appearance schedule.[20] He travels around the country in support of the newly reborn Students for a Democratic Society. Rudd, along with Brian Kelly of Pace SDS, have helped establish ties between the new SDS and the Kent State University movement. He wrote a second book on his time with SDS and The Weathermen called Underground: My Life with the SDS and the Weathermen, published by HarperCollins in 2009. This work is more a personal memoir than a political statement as was his first book.
Documentary filmmaker Sam Green made a 2008 short entitled Clear Glasses, which focuses on a pair of glasses Rudd sent him.
In 2008, Rudd spoke about the Vietnam War era activities of SDS and his involvement in them for the award-winning documentary film Superpower by Barbara-Anne Steegmuller.
In 2020, Rudd appeared in the documentary film The Boys Who Said No!, which explores the anti-Vietnam War and draft resistance movement.[21]
In 2024, he said of pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses against Israel's war on Gaza: "For me, it’s the most normal thing in the world to look at the murder of 34,000 people and the displacement of close to 2 million in Gaza and say, ‘Hey, stop!"[5]
Works
Mark Rudd, Truth and Consequences: The Education of Mark Rudd, Grove Press, 1990, ISBN978-0-8021-1269-9
Mark Rudd, Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen, William Morrow, 2009, ISBN978-0-06-147275-6
The Weather Underground was a far-left Marxist militant organization first active in 1969, founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. Originally known as the Weathermen, the group was organized as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) national leadership. Officially known as the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) beginning in 1970, the group's express political goal was to create a revolutionary party to overthrow the United States government, which WUO believed to be imperialist.
The Seattle Liberation Front, or SLF, was a radical anti-Vietnam War movement, based in Seattle, Washington, in the United States. The group, founded by the University of Washington visiting philosophy professor and political activist Michael Lerner, carried out its protest activities from 1970 to 1971. The most famous members of the SLF were the "Seattle Seven," who were charged with "conspiracy to incite a riot" in the wake of a violent protest at a courthouse. The members of the Seattle Seven were Lerner, Michael Abeles, Jeff Dowd, Joe Kelly, Susan Stern, Roger Lippman and Charles Marshall III.
Bernardine Rae Dohrn is a retired American law professor and a former leader of the far-left militant organization Weather Underground in the United States. As a leader of the Weather Underground in the early 1970s, Dohrn was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for several years. She remained a fugitive, even though she was removed from the list. After coming out of hiding in 1980, Dohrn pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of aggravated battery and bail jumping.
The Worker Student Alliance (WSA) in the United States was the section of Students for a Democratic Society led by the Progressive Labor Party. The WSA argued that the best way to build a movement in the working class, like SDS wanted, was for students to become involved in workers' struggles both on and off the campuses. In practice, that usually meant students enrolled in school would get jobs as cafeteria hands and other manual labor jobs at those schools.
Theodore "Ted" Gold was a member of Weather Underground who died in the 1970 Greenwich Village townhouse explosion.
The Days of Rage were a series of protests during three days in October 1969 in Chicago, organized by the emerging Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
Diana Oughton was an American member of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Michigan Chapter and later, a member of the 1960s radical group Weather Underground. Oughton received her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College. After graduation, Oughton went to Guatemala with the American Friends Service Committee program to teach the young and older Native Americans.
Cathlyn Platt Wilkerson, known as Cathy Wilkerson, is an American far-left radical who was a member of the 1970s radical group called the Weather Underground Organization (WUO). She came to the attention of the police when she was leaving the townhouse belonging to her father after it was destroyed by an explosion on March 6, 1970. Members of WUO had been constructing a nail bomb in the basement of the building, intending to use it in an attack on a non-commissioned officers dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey that night. Wilkerson, already free on bail for her involvement in the Chicago "Days of Rage" riots, avoided capture for 10 years. She surrendered in 1980 and pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of dynamite. She was sentenced to up to three years in prison and served 11 months.
Jeff Jones is an environmental activist and consultant in Upstate New York. He was a national officer in Students for a Democratic Society, a founding member of Weatherman, and a leader of the Weather Underground.
Terry Robbins was an American far left activist, a key member of the Ohio Students for a Democratic Society, and one of the three Weathermen who died in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion.
Brian Flanagan is an American former militant and activist who was a member of the radical left organizations Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Weather Underground Organization (WUO).
John Gregory Jacobs was an American student and anti-war activist in the 1960s and early 1970s. He was a leader in both Students for a Democratic Society and the Weatherman group, and an advocate of the use of violent force to overthrow the government of the United States. A fugitive after 1970, he died in 1997 in Canada.
William Charles Ayers is an American retired professor and former militant organizer. In 1969, Ayers co-founded the far-left militant organization the Weather Underground, a revolutionary group that sought to overthrow what they viewed as American imperialism. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Weather Underground conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings in opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The bombings caused no fatalities, except for three members killed when one of the group's devices accidentally exploded. The FBI described the Weather Underground as a domestic terrorist group. Ayers was hunted as a fugitive for several years, until charges were dropped due to illegal actions by the FBI agents pursuing him and others.
Dianne Marie Donghi is a French former member of Students for a Democratic Society and Weatherman (organization).
Robert Roth was an active member of the anti-war, anti-racism and anti-imperialism movements of the 1960s and 1970s and a key member of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) political movement in the Columbia University Chapter in New York, where he eventually presided. Later, as a member of the Weatherman/Weather Underground Organization he used militant tactics to oppose the Vietnam War and racism. After the war ended, Roth surfaced from his Underground status and has been involved in a variety of social causes.
Howard Norton Machtinger is a former director of Carolina Teaching Fellows, a student teacher scholarship program at the University of North Carolina. He is an education and civil rights activist, a teacher, a forum leader, and a political commentator. Machtinger is a former member of Students For a Democratic Society and Weatherman.
Phoebe Elizabeth Hirsch is a former member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and Weatherman (WUO).
In the United States, the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) is the section of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) that opposed the Worker Student Alliance of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). Most of the national leadership of SDS joined the RYM in order to oppose PLP's party line and what they alleged to be its attempted takeover of the SDS leadership structure, particularly at the 1969 SDS convention in Chicago.
The 1969 Students for a Democratic Society National Convention held in June of that year in Chicago, Illinois was the final convention held by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The gathering, which took place over June 18–22, was one of four conventions that officers and members of SDS attended each year. Taking place at the Chicago Coliseum, the convention was the site of chaos and tension, with members breaking into factions, each vying for control of the organization. Prior to this convention, one of the factions, the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM), soon to be renamed the Weathermen, wrote a manifesto regarding the ways and means by which to take SDS in the years to come. The creation of the Weathermen, from RYM, was essentially the main reason for the functioning, and later the disintegration, of SDS. Leading members of the college-based organization wanted to push its boundaries in order to create real revolution and change in America. The SDS National Convention of June 1969 was the culmination of all disagreement within its membership. The result of the convention was a disoriented and gutted organization, complete in only its name.
References
Perkins,Robin, "The Days of Rage in Perspective", Commentary, May 2001, p.23-24.
Jacobs, Ron, "The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. Verso Publishing, 1997, p.233.
Willis, Margaret, Revolutionalry Violence in America, Green Mountain Press, 1993, p.43-44.
Rudd, Mark, Truth and Consequences: The Education of Mark Rudd, Grove Press, 1990.
Ninety Fourth Congress (1975) The Weather Underground: Report of the Subcommittee to investigate the administration of the internal security act and other internal security laws of the committee on the judiciary United States Senate. (Stock No. 052-070-02727-4) Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, Pgs 95–102.
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Panel: How Black Students Helped Lead the 1968 Columbia U. Strike Against Militarism & Racism 50 Years Ago 
