Can well-placed funding make a difference in world affairs? In the early 1980s, a close-knit group of innovative philanthropists (including the author) dared to fund the burgeoning social movement to end the nuclear arms race. The nuclear freeze campaign and other organizations dedicated to disarmament thrived as a result of the timely investments of this group. Before long, larger foundations joined in, building a formidable opposition to Reagan's Cold War policies. The peace movement and arms control experts they funded built a public demand for detente and convinced decisionmakers to reduce the nuclear threat. At the end of the Cold War and throughout the 1990s, the funders' group fragmented into several different directions. Among those was support for a strong new movement toward civil society which meshes conflict resolution with a dedication to economic justice, democratic participation, and other universal values. The author's fund, the Winston Foundation for World Peace, was a leader in that effort. From the Winston Foundation to MacArthur, Soros, Ford, Rockefeller, and many others along the way, this is the story of the strategy sessions, the activist meetings, the funding battles, and the political fallout that ensued on an occasion when major funders chose to actively engage in world affairs. Part memoir, part social change analysis, Making the Money Sing is a provocative, insider's look at the cloistered world of philanthropy and the way that money can make a difference in changing the shape of history.
My focus on the "human element" of war goes back several years. Most of my books have engaged the causes and consequences of war for the innocent people caught up in conflict. This is a neglected topic in academic research and gets little attention in the news media. Somehow, the ordinary people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and other venues of war don't seem to count for much. The topic is not only important politically and morally -- for how we shape war policies -- but is fascinating (often heart-rending) as stories. Millions of people have been killed in U.S. wars (and other wars, of course), many more millions have been made homeless, destitute, and damaged. Yet we seem as a society to care very little for these people. It's an enormous puzzle, really, why so many civilians suffer in war and why we do so little about that.
I recall one of the best war documentaries ever, "Hearts and Minds," which was about the Vietnam War. Near the end, a Vietnamese man was sobbing over the rubble of his home, which had been bombed by the U.S., asking why his village, which had no military value, was destroyed, and his family destroyed with it. "Tell Nixon she was only a little girl," he cried about his young daughter, "a little schoolgirl." You see this and you must wonder, How could this possibly happen?
So I have set out to explore how and why ordinary people are buffeted by war. Much of my work at MIT is focused on these kinds of questions. The "terrible swift sword" of war strikes all around, even the innocent, particularly the innocent. This -- and the hope to prevent it -- is my life's work.
For a fuller and more conventional bio, see http://www.johntirman.com/bio.html
