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Lawrence S. Wittner
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Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual (Legacies of War) Paperback – March 20, 2012

by Lawrence S. Wittner (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 11 ratings
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A longtime agitator against war and social injustice, Lawrence Wittner has been tear-gassed, threatened by police with drawn guns, charged by soldiers with fixed bayonets, spied upon by the U.S. government, arrested, and purged from his job for political -reasons. To say that this teacher-historian-activist has led an interesting life is a considerable understatement.
    In this absorbing memoir, Wittner traces the dramatic course of a life and career that took him from a Brooklyn boyhood in the 1940s and ’50s to an education at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin to the front lines of peace activism, the fight for racial equality, and the struggles of the labor movement. He details his family background, which included the bloody anti-Semitic pogroms of late-nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, and chronicles his long teaching career, which comprised positions at a small black college in Virginia, an elite women’s liberal arts college north of New York City, and finally a permanent home at the Albany campus of the State University of New York. Throughout, he packs the narrative with colorful vignettes describing such activities as fighting racism in Louisiana and Mississippi during the early 1960s, collaborating with peace-oriented intellectuals in Gorbachev’s Soviet Union, and leading thousands of antinuclear demonstrators through the streets of Hiroshima. As the book also reveals, Wittner’s work as an activist was matched by scholarly achievements that made him one of the world’s foremost authorities on the history of the peace and nuclear disarmament movements—a research specialty that led to revealing encounters with such diverse figures as Norman Thomas, the Unabomber, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Caspar Weinberger, and David Horowitz.
    A tenured professor and renowned author who has nevertheless lived in tension with the broader currents of his society, Lawrence Wittner tells an engaging personal story that includes some of the most turbulent and significant events of recent history.

Lawrence S. Wittner, emeritus professor of history at the University at Albany, SUNY, is the author of numerous scholarly works, including the award-winning three-volume Struggle Against the Bomb. Among other awards and honors, he has received major grants or fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Aspen Institute, the United States Institute of Peace, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

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  1. Part of series
    Legacies of War
  2. Print length
    288 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Univ Tennessee Press
  5. Publication date
    March 20, 2012
  6. Dimensions
    6 x 0.7 x 9 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    1572338571
  8. ISBN-13
    978-1572338579
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Larry Wittner's life and work are inspiring on their own, but he recounts them in such a frank, open manner that he has crafted a real page-turner. Working for Peace and Justice takes you along on a joyful ride of discovery through the life of a model citizen/scholar/activist."
—Kevin Martin, Executive Director, Peace Action

“Scholar, activist, and troubadour Larry Wittner has gifted us with his bold life’s journey for world betterment. Vividly written and deeply moving, this timely, splendid book will inform and hearten everyone concerned about peace and freedom, justice, democracy, and human rights.”
—Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor Roosevelt and Distinguished Professor of History and Women’s Studies, John Jay College & Graduate Center, CUNY

“The season has come for memoirs of the children of the 1960s who became academics and changed the academy, and this memoir is a jewel of the genre: wonderfully lucid, evocative, honest, unpretentious, precise, and interesting. Larry Wittner’s splendid account reflects his deep good-spiritedness and describes his many years of activist struggle for peace and social justice.”
—Gary Dorrien, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics, Union Theological Seminary; Professor of Religion, Columbia University

“It is fascinating to peer into the personal life of Lawrence Wittner—the great chronicler of the antinuclear movement—in this quite amazing autobiography. He has lived an exemplary life, one that we all should try and emulate in our own individual ways.”
—Helen Caldicott, Founding President, Physicians for Social Responsibility

“Working for Peace and Justice provides a readable narrative of what it takes and the price one pays when the choice is made both to live a life of thought and contemplation and to act on a genuine commitment to make the world a safer and better place. Whether he was formulating ideas for world peace or walking a picket line, Larry Wittner was there and his impact was felt. We can all learn lessons from this wonderful memoir.”
—Bill Scheuerman, former President, United University Professions; retired President, National Labor College

"Larry Wittner's engaging and important memoir reminds me of why his work, his scholarship, and his activism have made me proud to be an American historian. It is a record of democratic social struggle, as well as a gift to those in the next generation who will have the courage and ambition to follow his example of working for a better world."
—Martin J. Sherwin, winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for biography

“Larry Wittner has been—and remains—a great union activist. Read this book and you’ll learn what Solidarity really means!”
—Bill Ritchie, President, Albany County Central Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO

About the Author

Lawrence S. Wittner, emeritus professor of history at the University at Albany, SUNY, is the author of numerous scholarly works, including the award-winning three-volume Struggle Against the Bomb. Among other awards and honors, he has received major grants or fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Aspen Institute, the United States Institute of Peace, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
 

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Univ Tennessee Press; First Edition, First (March 20, 2012)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1572338571
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1572338579
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.1 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.7 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 11 ratings

About the author

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Lawrence S. Wittner

Lawrence S. Wittner

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Lawrence S. Wittner is an American historian who has written primarily on peace movements, nuclear disarmament, foreign policy, and economic equality. He attended Columbia College (B.A., 1962), the University of Wisconsin (M.A., 1963), and Columbia University (Ph.D., 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/Albany, where he rose to the rank of Professor of History before his retirement in 2010. He is the author of eight scholarly books, the editor or co-editor of another four, the writer of a novel, and the author of approximately 400 published articles and book reviews. Currently, he serves on the executive committee of the Albany County Central Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO) and as a board member of the Citizens for Global Solutions Education Fund. For more information, visit: www.lawrenceswittner.com.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
11 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

john heuer
5.0 out of 5 stars Legacies of Peace Building
Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2012
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Prof. Lawrence Wittner's memoir is must reading for veterans of the sixties, and those newcomers interested in learning about those turbulent times. The struggle of African-Americans and their allies for liberation from Jim Crow segregation and the legacy of slavery is too often forgotten or overlooked in our nation's historical narrative. The civil rights movement may have been Wittner's introduction to justice activism, descended as he was from oppressed Jewish families in Eastern Europe. But it opened a door to a lifetime pursuit of peace and justice, which led to conflicts with the "craven servants of thought control" he encountered throughout his career in academia.

As a young scholar, Wittner embarked on a history of the peace movement, believing, at the beginning of his inquiry, that the movement for peace had failed miserably. But his meticulous research demonstrated the opposite of his preconceptions.

It was never fore-ordained that the Cold War would end with the collapse of the Soviet Union, rather than the big-bang nuclear holocaust of everyone's worst nightmare. What did it take to avert this cataclysm? It took millions of peace activists in the US, the USSR and around the world pressuring their leaders to back off from those horrific buttons.

As a new nuclear abolition movement gathers force, we can take heart from scholars and activists like Larry Wittner, who lead the way toward the abolition of nuclear weapons, and to put an end to war.

John Heuer
Chapel Hill, NC
3 people found this helpful
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Mitchell
4.0 out of 5 stars Working for Peace and Justice
Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2012
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Larry Wittner, author of the outstanding trilogy of the world nuclear disarmament movement titled "The Struggle Against the Bomb", has written another winner. His memoirs of an activist intellectual is both interesting and entertaining as he discusses the trials and tribulations of his personal, activist and professional life. How does one become an activist intellectual? What sustains such an activist? Are the efforts to make the world a better place worth the physical and emotional toll? Wittner answers these questions within the context of descriptions of actions he took with others on the local, national and world stages. I recommend the book highly.
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Andy
5.0 out of 5 stars A gem
Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2012
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This is a great book for anyone interested in the last 50 years of American grassroots politics. Not only do Larry's memoirs add to the many we have of the 1960s, but he gives us a rare account of radical politics at ground level into the 21st century. I'll admit it -- I'm a friend. But I'm also a historian of the period and this volume shows that American peace activism and labor radicalism survived and thrived well past 1968, even in places like upstate New York. Larry's international experiences also cast a picture of the American left in global terms. Let's hope more autobiographies like this one start appearing.
6 people found this helpful
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fjs
5.0 out of 5 stars The book is an easy read - I ordered it to learn about author's ...
Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2015
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The book is an easy read - I ordered it to learn about author's family, as some of his relatives are also on my family tree! Got a glimpse of the ancestors in context with history!
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David Swanson
4.0 out of 5 stars Why Even Failed Activism Succeeds
Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2012
I enjoy reading histories of past activism, including memoirs by long-time activists, such as Lawrence Wittner's new book, Working for Peace and Justice.

Almost every such account includes belated discoveries of the extent to which a government has been spying on and infiltrating activist groups.

And almost every such account includes belated discoveries of the extent to which government officials were influenced by activist groups even while pretending to ignore popular pressure.

These revelations can be found in the memoirs of the government officials as well, such as in George W. Bush's recollection of how seriously the Republican Senate Majority Leader was taking public pressure against the war on Iraq in 2006.

Of course, activism that appears ineffectual at the time can succeed in a great many ways, including by influencing others, even young children, who go on to become effective activists -- or by influencing firm opponents who begin to change their minds and eventually switch sides.

The beautiful thing about nonviolent activism is that, while risking no harm, it has the potential to do good in ways small and large that ripple out from it in directions we cannot track or measure.

Wittner participated in his first political demonstration in 1961. The USSR was withdrawing from a moratorium on nuclear testing. A protest at the White House urged President Kennedy not to follow suit:

"Picking up what I considered a very clever sign ('Kennedy, Don't Mimic the Russians!'), I joined the others (supplemented by a second busload of students from a Quaker college in the Midwest) circling around a couple of trees outside the White House. Mike and I -- as new and zealous recruits -- circled all day without taking a lunch or a dinner break.

"For decades I looked back on this venture as a trifle ridiculous. After all, we and other small bands of protesters couldn't have had any impact on U.S. policy, could we? Then in the mid-1990s, while doing research at the Kennedy Library on the history of the world nuclear disarmament movement, I stumbled onto an oral history interview with Adrian Fisher, deputy director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He was explaining why Kennedy delayed resuming atmospheric nuclear tests until April 1962. Kennedy personally wanted to resume such tests, Fisher recalled, 'but he also recognized that there were a lot of people that were going to be deeply offended by the United States resuming atmospheric testing. We had people picketing the White House, and there was a lot of excitement about it -- just because the Russians do it, why do we have to do it?'"

Yes, Kennedy delayed a horrible action. He didn't, at that time, block it permanently. But if the picketers in 1961 had had the slightest notion that Kennedy was being influenced by them, their numbers would have multiplied 10-fold, as would the delay have correspondingly lengthened.

Yes, our government was more responsive to public opinion in the 1960s than now, but part of the reason is that more people were active then. And another reason is that government officials are doing a better job now of hiding any responsiveness to public sentiment, which helps convince the public it has no impact, which reduces activism further. We also focus far too much on the most difficult individuals to move, such as presidents.

In 1973-1974, Wittner visited GI coffee houses in Japan including in Yokusaka, where the Midway aircraft carrier was in port. The Japanese were protesting the ship's carrying of nuclear weapons, which was illegal in Japan, and which the U.S. military, of course, lied about. But U.S. soldiers with whom Wittner and other activists had talked, brought them onto the ship and showed them the nukes. The following summer, when Wittner read in a newspaper that,

"a substantial number of American GIs had refused to board the Midway for a mission to South Korea, then swept by popular protest against the U.S.-backed dictatorship, it occurred to me that I might have played some small role in inspiring their mutiny."

Soldiers can still be reached much more easily than presidents, more easily in many cases in fact than the average citizen. War lies are harder to sell to the people who have been fighting the wars.

In the late 1990s, Wittner was researching the anti-nuclear movement of decades past. He interviewed Robert "Bud" McFarlane, President Ronald Reagan's former national security advisor:

"Other administration officials had claimed that they had barely noticed the nuclear freeze movement. But when I asked McFarlane about it, he lit up and began outlining a massive administration campaign to counter and discredit the freeze -- one that he had directed. . . . A month later, I interviewed Edwin Meese, a top White House staffer and U.S. attorney general during the Reagan administration. When I asked him about the administration's response to the freeze campaign, he followed the usual line by saying that there was little official notice taken of it. In response, I recounted what McFarlane had revealed. A sheepish grin now spread across this former government official's face, and I knew that I had caught him. 'If Bud says that,' he remarked tactfully, 'it must be true.'"

When someone tells you to stop imagining that you're having an impact, ask them to please redirect their energy into getting 10 friends to join you in doing what needs to be done. If it has no impact, you'll have gone down trying. If it has an impact, nobody will tell you for many years.
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