June 12th, 2015
By Lawrence S. Wittner.
Eugene Victor “Gene” Debs
The recent announcement by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, an avowed “democratic socialist,” that he is running for the Democratic nomination for President raises the question of whether Americans will vote for a candidate with that political orientation.
During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the idea of democratic socialism — democratic control of the economy — had substantial popularity in the United States. At the time, the Socialist Party of America was a thriving, rapidly-growing political organization, much like its democratic socialist counterparts abroad — the British Labour Party, the French Socialist Party, the German Social Democratic Party, the Australian Labor Party, and numerous other rising, working class-based political entities around the world. In 1912, when the United States had a much smaller population than today, the Socialist Party had 118,000 dues-paying members and drew nearly a million votes for its candidate, Eugene V. Debs, the great labor leader, for President. (The victor that year was the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, who drew six million votes.) Furthermore, the party held 1,200 public offices in 340 cities, including 79 mayors in 24 states. Socialist administrations were elected in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Butte, Montana, Flint, Michigan, Schenectady, New York, and all across the country. In 1912, the Socialist Party claimed 323 English and foreign language publications with a total circulation in excess of two million.
Of course, this socialist surge didn’t last. The Democratic and the Republican parties, faced with this threat to their political future, turned to supporting progressive agendas — breaking up or regulating giant corporations, curbing corporate abuses, and championing a graduated income tax — that stole the socialists’ thunder. In addition, after U.S. entry into World War I, an action opposed by the socialists, the federal and state governments moved to crush the Socialist Party — arresting and imprisoning its leaders (including Debs), purging its elected officials, and closing down its publications. Moreover, one portion of the party, excited by the success of revolutionaries in overthrowing Russia’s Czar and establishing the Soviet Union, broke with the Socialist Party and established Communist rivals. Co-opted by the mainstream parties, repressed by government, and abandoned by would-be revolutionaries, the Socialist Party never recovered.
Even so, democratic socialism retained a lingering influence in American life. When a new wave of reform occurred during the New Deal of the 1930s, it included numerous measures advocated and popularized by the Socialist Party: Social Security; public jobs programs like the WPA; minimum wage laws; maximum hour laws; and a steep tax on the wealthy. Here and there, although rarely, socialists even secured public office, and Milwaukee voters regularly elected socialist mayors until 1948. Starting in 1928 and running through the early post-World War II era, Norman Thomas became the attractive, articulate leader of the Socialist Party, and was widely respected among many American liberals and union leaders.
What nearly eliminated the Socialist Party was a combination of New Deal measures (which drew labor and other key constituencies into the Democratic Party) and the public’s identification of Socialism with Communism. Although, in fact, the American Socialist and Communist parties were bitter rivals — the former championing democratic socialism on the British model and the latter authoritarian socialism on the Soviet model — many Americans, influenced by dire conservative warnings, confused the two. Particularly during the Cold War, this further undermined the Socialist Party.
In the early 1970s, with the party barely surviving, most democratic socialists decided it was time to reassess their strategy. They asked: Did the collapse of the Socialist Party mean that, in the United States, democratic socialism was unpopular, or did it mean that third party voting was unpopular? After all, large numbers of Americans supported democratic socialist programs, ranging from national healthcare to public education, from public transportation to taxing the rich, from preserving the environment to defending workers’ rights. What would happen if democratic socialists worked for their programs within the Democratic Party, where the typical constituencies of the world’s democratic socialist parties — unions, racial minorities, women’s rights activists, and environmentalists — were already located? Led by the party’s titular leader, Michael Harrington, whose book The Other America sparked the War on Poverty of the 1960s, they organized Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and plunged into major social movements and into the Democratic Party.
Although, in the ensuing decades, DSA made little progress toward rebuilding a mass, high profile democratic socialist organization, it did manage to pull thousands of union, racial justice, women’s rights, and environmental activists into its orbit. DSA also discovered a significant number of leftwing Democratic and, sometimes, independent candidates for office who welcomed its support and occasionally joined it. Bernie Sanders — an independent who was elected as mayor of Burlington, Vermont’s only Congressman, and a U.S. Senator from Vermont — is certainly one of the most successful of these politicians. Indeed, in 2012 he won re-election to the Senate with 71 percent of the vote.
But will Americans actually support a democratic socialist in the Democratic Presidential primaries? Sanders himself has conceded that the odds are heavily against him. Even so, although a Quinnipiac poll of American voters in late May of this year found him far behind the much better known and better funded Hillary Clinton, his 15 percent of the vote placed him well ahead of all other potential Democratic candidates. Also, there’s great potential for broadening his support. The latest poll on Americans’ attitudes toward “socialism,” taken in December 2011, found that 31 percent of respondents had a positive reaction to it. And what if Americans had been asked about their attitude toward “democratic socialism”?
Consequently, even if Hillary Clinton emerges as the Democratic nominee, as seems likely, a good showing by Sanders could strengthen the democratic socialist current in American life.
– See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/159564#sthash.SAIpYKIu.dpuf
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May 28th, 2015
The Sad Case of Start-Up NY
For several decades, state and local governments have been showering private businesses with tax breaks and direct subsidies based on the theory that this practice fosters economic development and, therefore, job growth. But does it? New York State’s experience indicates that, when it comes to producing jobs, corporate welfare programs are a bad investment.
In May 2013, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, with enormous fanfare, launched a campaign to establish Tax-Free NY—a scheme providing tax-free status for ten years to companies that moved onto or near the state’s public college and university campuses. According to Cuomo, this would “supercharge” the state’s economy and bring job creation efforts to an unprecedented level. It was “a game-changing initiative,” the governor insisted, and—despite criticism from educators, unions, and some conservatives — local officials fell into line. Reluctant to oppose this widely-touted jobs creation measure, the state legislature established the program—renamed Start-Up NY and including some private college campuses—that June.
After that, Start-Up NY moved into high gear. A total of 356 tax-free zones were established at 62 New York colleges and universities, with numerous administrators hired to oversee the development of the new commercial programs on their campuses. New York State spent $47 million in 2014—and might have spent as much as $150 million over the years—advertising Start-Up NY in all 50 states of the nation, with ads focused on the theme: “New York Open for Business.” Nancy Zimpher, the chancellor of the State University of New York, crowed: “Nowhere in the country do new businesses and entrepreneurs stand to benefit more by partnering with higher education than in New York State, thanks to the widespread success of Governor Cuomo’s Start-Up NY program. With interest and investment coming in from around the globe and new jobs being created in every region, Start-Up NY has provided a spark for our economy and for SUNY.” This was, she declared, a “transformative initiative.”
The government entity that oversees more than 50 of the state’s economic development programs, during all of 2014 Start-Up NY generated a grand total of 76 jobs.
But how “transformative” has Start-Up NY been? According to the Empire State Development Corporation, the government entity that oversees more than 50 of the state’s economic development programs, during all of 2014 Start-Up NY generated a grand total of 76 jobs. Moreover, the vast majority of the 30 companies operating under the program had simply shifted their operations from one region of the state to another. The New York Times reported that, of the businesses up and running under Start-Up NY, just four came from out of state. Indeed, in some cases, the “new” businesses had not even crossed county lines. One company moved one mile to qualify for the tax-free program. Furthermore, when it came to business investment, there was a substantial gap between promises and implementation. As theEmpire State Development Corporation noted, companies promised $91 million in investments over a five year period, but only invested $1.7 million of that in 2014. Thus, not surprisingly, during 2014 the companies operating under Start-Up NY created only 4 percent of the new jobs they had promised.
Actually, Start-Up NY’s dismal record is not much worse than that of New York’s other economic development programs. According to a December 2013 study by the Alliance for a Greater New York, the state spends approximately $7 billion every year on subsidies to businesses, including “tax exemptions, tax credits, grants, tax-exempt bonds, and discounted land to corporations, ostensibly in the name of job creation, economic growth, and improved quality of life for all New Yorkers.” But 33 percent of spending by the state’s Industrial Development Agencies resulted in no job promises, no job creation, or a loss of jobs. In fact, “with little accountability, businesses often take the money and run.”
A recent report by state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli reached similar conclusions. According to DiNapoli, in 2014 the programs overseen by the Empire State Development Corporation cost the state $1.3 billion (not including the voluminous tax breaks granted to companies) and helped create or retain only 14,779 jobs — at a cost to taxpayers of $87,962 per job. The comptroller’s scathing report concluded that there was no attempt by the state agency to ascertain whether its programs “have succeeded or failed at creating good jobs for New Yorkers or whether its investments are reasonable.”
Of course, instead of shoveling billions of dollars into the coffers of private, profit-making companies, New York could invest its public resources in worthwhile ventures that generate large numbers of jobs — for example, in public education. In 2011, as a consequence of severe cutbacks in state funding of New York’s public schools and a new state law that capped local property tax growth—two measures demanded by Governor Cuomo — 7,000 teachers were laid off and another 4,000 teacher positions went unfilled. Overall, 80 percent of school districts reported cutting teaching positions.
Today, with New York’s schools severely underfunded—more than half of them receiving less state aid now than they did in 2008-2009—this pattern of eliminating teachers and closing down educational opportunities for children has continued. But what if the billions of dollars squandered on subsidizing private businesses in the forlorn hope that they will hire workers were spent, instead, on putting thousands of teachers back to work? Wouldn’t this policy also create a better educated workforce that would be more likely to secure employment? And wouldn’t this shift in investment have the added advantage of creating a more knowledgeable public, better able to understand the world and partake in the full richness of civilization?
It’s a shame that many state and local government officials have such a limited, business-oriented mentality that they cannot imagine an alternative to corporate welfare.
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March 31st, 2015
By Lawrence S. Wittner
Given all the frothing by hawkish U.S. Senators about Iran’s possible development of nuclear weapons, one might think that Iran was violating the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
But it’s not. The NPT, signed by 190 nations and in effect since 1970, is a treaty in which the non-nuclear nations agreed to forgo developing nuclear weapons and the nuclear nations agreed to divest themselves of their nuclear weapons. It also granted nations the right to develop peaceful nuclear power. The current negotiations in which Iran is engaged with other nations are merely designed to guarantee that Iran, which signed the NPT, does not cross the line from developing nuclear power to developing nuclear weapons.
Nine nations, however, have flouted the NPT by either developing nuclear weapons since the treaty went into effect or failing to honor the commitment to disarm. These nine scofflaws and their nuclear arsenals are Russia (7,500 nuclear warheads), the United States (7,100 nuclear warheads), France (300 nuclear warheads), China (250 nuclear warheads), Britain (215 nuclear warheads), Pakistan (100-120 nuclear warheads), India (90-110 nuclear warheads), Israel (80 nuclear warheads), and North Korea (10 nuclear warheads).
Nor are the nuclear powers likely to be in compliance with the NPT any time soon. The Indian and Pakistani governments are engaged in a rapid nuclear weapons buildup, while the British government is contemplating the development of a new, more advanced nuclear weapons system. Although, in recent decades, the U.S. and Russian governments did reduce their nuclear arsenals substantially, that process has come to a halt in recent years, as relations have soured between the two nations. Indeed, both countries are currently engaged in a new, extremely dangerous nuclear arms race. The U.S. government has committed itself to spending $1 trillion to “modernize” its nuclear facilities and build new nuclear weapons. For its part, the Russian government is investing heavily in the upgrading of its nuclear warheads and the development of new delivery systems, such as nuclear missiles and nuclear submarines.
What can be done about this flouting of the NPT, some 45 years after it went into operation?
That will almost certainly be a major issue at an NPT Review Conference that will convene at the UN headquarters, in New York City, from April 27 to May 22. These review conferences, held every five years, attract high-level national officials from around the world to discuss the treaty’s implementation. For a very brief time, the review conferences even draw the attention of television and other news commentators before the mass communications media return to their preoccupation with scandals, arrests, and the lives of movie stars.
This spring’s NPT review conference might be particularly lively, given the heightening frustration of the non-nuclear powers at the failure of the nuclear powers to fulfill their NPT commitments. At recent disarmament conferences in Norway, Mexico and Austria, the representatives of a large number of non-nuclear nations, ignoring the opposition of the nuclear powers, focused on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war. One rising demand among restless non-nuclear nations and among nuclear disarmament groups is to develop a nuclear weapons ban treaty, whether or not the nuclear powers are willing to participate in negotiations.
To heighten the pressure for the abolition of nuclear weapons, nuclear disarmament groups are staging a Peace and Planet mobilization, in Manhattan, on the eve of the NPT review conference. Calling for a “Nuclear-Free, Peaceful, Just, and Sustainable World,” the mobilization involves an international conference (comprised of plenaries and workshops) on April 24 and 25, plus a culminating interfaith convocation, rally, march, and festival on April 26. Among the hundreds of endorsing organizations are many devoted to peace (Fellowship of Reconciliation, Pax Christi, Peace Action, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Veterans for Peace, and Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom), environmentalism (Earth Action, Friends of the Earth, and 350NYC), religion (Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, Unitarian Universalist UN Office, United Church of Christ, and United Methodist General Board of Church & Society), workers’ rights (New Jersey Industrial Union Council, United Electrical Workers, and Working Families Party), and human welfare (American Friends Service Committee and National Association of Social Workers).
Of course, how much effect the proponents of a nuclear weapons-free world will have on the cynical officials of the nuclear powers remains to be seen. After as many as 45 years of stalling on their own nuclear disarmament, it is hard to imagine that they are finally ready to begin negotiating a treaty effectively banning nuclear weapons―or at least their nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, let us encourage Iran not to follow the bad example set by the nuclear powers. And let us ask the nuclear-armed nations, now telling Iran that it should forgo the possession of nuclear weapons, when they are going to start practicing what they preach.
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March 21st, 2015
By Lawrence Wittner.
David Krieger’s new book of poems―Wake Up!―shows us that poetry engaged with world affairs can be very powerful.
In a brief introduction to the book, Krieger―the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and the author of several previous volumes of poetry―remarks that people who write poetry after Auschwitz, as well as after Hiroshima, Nagasaki, wars, and threats of universal death, must not only “confront the ugliness of human brutality,” but “express the heart’s longing for peace and reveal its grief at our loss of decency.” He adds: “They must uncover the truth of who we are . . . and who we could become.” In this slender volume, Krieger succeeds brilliantly at this task.
In short, accessible, and moving poems, Krieger ranges over a variety of issues. Prominent among them are the forgotten crimes of war (described in “Little Changes”):
Our brave young soldiers
shot babies at My Lai―
few remember. . . .
From My Lai
to Abu Ghraib―
the terrible silence.
In “Among the Ashes” and elsewhere, Krieger also focuses on the atrocity of nuclear war:
Among the ashes
of Hiroshima
were crisply charred bodies.
In one of the charred bodies
a daughter recognized
the gold tooth of her mother.
As the girl reached out
to touch the burnt body
her mother crumbled to ashes.
Her mother, so vivid
in the girl’s memory, sifted
through her hands, floated away.
As might be expected, the officials of the major war-making powers do not inspire Krieger’s admiration. In a poem about George W. Bush (“Staying the Course”), he writes:
The race has been run
and he lost.
Yet, he swaggers
around the track as though
it were a victory lap.
It is hard not to think:
How pathetic is power.
By contrast, there are numerous poems in Wake Up! that celebrate the humane values of Albert Einstein, Jesse Jackson, and other individuals further from the levers of global power. In a beautiful tribute to Nelson Mandela (“Madiba”), Krieger asks: “How does one earn the world’s respect?” And he answers: “He showed us with his life.” There are even elegant poems (such as “We Walked Together”) calling attention to the beauty of life and love:
In fog we walked along an empty beach,
above the water’s edge, and looking back
along the shore, we saw our footprints
in the sand, like a patterned prayer.
We are here upon this rare Earth but once, we mused.
Conscious of our brief light within the fog
and the brevity of being, we breathed deep our bounty
and the ocean air, each taking our full share.
In eternity’s long stretch of time,
behind us and ahead, we retraced our steps and
marveled that we should meet at all, let alone
here and now, in a place so fine and fair.
Sometimes there is a surprise lurking in wait, as befits a poem (“Reflecting on You”) produced by a writer who stubbornly refuses to ignore reality:
Your soul, fully alive, has no sadness
from morning to night.
It is light and playful,
the soul of an innocent child.
Your soul is a hatchling, chirping
with joy, needing to be fed.
You are one of the fortunate ones,
never imagining what it means
to be lonely or frightened,
to be awakened in the night
and taken by the Gestapo.
Infusing the book is an element of brooding tragedy―of beauty corrupted, of potential unrealized. This element is captured in Krieger’s poem, “Archeology of War”:
The years of war numb us, grind us
down as they pile up one upon the other
forming a burial mound not only
for the fallen soldiers and innocents
who were killed, but for the parts of us,
once decent and bright with hope,
now deflated by the steady fall of death
and sting of empty promises.
And yet there remains a measure of hope, a belief that people can rise to the occasion. At least implicitly, that’s what comes through in “Wake Up!”―a poem about the danger of nuclear war that gives the book its title:
The alarm is sounding.
Can you hear it? . . .
Wake up!
Now, before the feathered arrow
is placed into the bow.
Now before the string
of the bow is pulled taut,
the arrow poised for flight.
Now, before the arrow is let loose,
before it flies across oceans
and continents.
Now, before we are engulfed in flames,
while there is still time, while we still can,
Wake up!
Of course, Krieger is hardly unique among Americans in writing poems deploring war and violence. Such poets range from John Greenleaf Whitter, James Russell Lowell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Stephen Crane, and Vachel Lindsay centuries ago to e.e. cummings, Robinson Jeffers, Kenneth Patchen, Robert Lowell, Barbara Deming, Paul Goodman, Denise Levertov, and Marge Piercy in more recent times.
Perhaps it takes poetry to move us beyond the chilling, day-to-day news bombarding us about ongoing wars and preparations for nuclear annihilation into a realm where we can truly confront the sadness of a world that, despite its enormous knowledge and resources, persists in organizing and engaging in mass slaughter. Perhaps poetry can also give us a fuller appreciation of life’s beauty, as well as the will to create a better future.
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March 8th, 2015
By Lawrence S. Wittner.
As a scholarly specialist on the American peace movement, I am sometimes telephoned for background information by journalists writing articles about current demonstrations against war or against nuclear weapons. Almost invariably, they have no idea that the American peace movement has a rich history. Or, if they realize that it does have such a history, they have no idea that that history goes back further than the Vietnam War. This is a very big and unfortunate gap in their knowledge. Actually, the American peace movement dates back two centuries and has involved millions of people (among them prominent figures like John Quincy Adams, Charles Sumner, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Jane Addams, Robert La Follette, John Dewey, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr.). Another relatively unknown fact is the importance of New York State―and particularly New York City―in that movement’s history.
Of course, even before there was an organized peace movement in the United States, there were individual pacifists and peace-oriented Americans. The pacifists, especially, came mostly from three small groups that sprang from the Protestant Reformation―the Society of Friends (better known as Quakers), the Mennonites, and the Brethren. They originally settled primarily in Pennsylvania, where the Quakers established a colony run on pacifist principles. But they eventually fanned out across the northern colonies and states, including New York, where they were joined by another Christian religious pacifist group, the Shakers.
But the first formal peace organization in the United States―and probably in the world―was not established until 1815. This was the New York Peace Society, founded by David Low Dodge, a New York merchant, in August of that year. Dodge was a Presbyterian who, like many other Americans, was horrified by the bloodshed of the Napoleonic Wars, which reached the United States in the form of the War of 1812. In 1815, Dodge published a small book, War Inconsistent with the Religion of Jesus Christ. In it, he not only catalogued the inhumane aspects of war, but contended that “all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity cannot but ardently desire that wars may cease.” Thus, they should “immediately renounce everything that leads to wars . . . and embrace everything which would promote that glorious reign of righteousness and peace.” With this in mind, Dodge and his friends founded the New York Peace Society, an organization largely confined to New York City and open to both pacifists and non-pacifists, although the executive committee was limited to pacifists. Of the 30 original members, some were clergy and others were philanthropic businessmen.
In subsequent months and years, other local peace societies were established in the United States, mostly in the northern states. In 1828, they drew together to form the American Peace Society, with the New York Peace Society as a local branch.
Much of this early American peace movement faded with the approach of the Civil War. The major reason was that most of the movement’s Northern supporters―people like William Lloyd Garrison, the famed abolitionist leader―rallied behind the Union cause thanks to their keen desire to end slavery.
In New York City, however, the Northern cause was considerably less popular. Not only was New York City never an abolitionist stronghold, but the large number of poor, Irish-American workers living there deeply resented the draft, which conscripted them for service in the Union army while enabling the wealthy to escape military service through a $300 payment to a substitute. Eventually, this situation erupted into three days of very violent anti-draft riots. Naturally, the small New York peace movement had nothing to do with this violence, which ended only after the rioters were suppressed by federal troops. But the confrontation did indicate the widespread unpopularity of military service in circles that went beyond the rather elite, Protestant-dominated peace movement of the time.
For the most part, the leadership of the American peace movement from the mid to the late nineteenth century came from New England. This included: William Ladd, a former sea captain from Maine who became the first president of the American Peace Society; William Lloyd Garrison, the great abolitionist leader from New England who founded the New England Non-Resistance Society; Elihu Burritt, a remarkably learned blacksmith from Connecticut who founded the League of Universal Brotherhood; and the cluster of late nineteenth century anti-imperialists, with their greatest strength in Massachusetts, who opposed the U.S. conquest and annexation of the Philippines.
But, in the last years of the nineteenth century, the pendulum began swinging back to New York. International arbitration was a key demand of peace proponents, and this idea was taken up by two Quaker brothers, Alfred and Albert Smiley. Beginning in 1895 and continuing for a total of 22 summers, they brought leaders from the ranks of government, business, religion, education, and reform to their resort at Lake Mohonk, New York to discuss international affairs. Here they fostered discussions of international arbitration, international law, and the creation of an international court. Although the New York Peace Society had long ago gone defunct, in 1906 it was re-established and became one of the most powerful branches of the American Peace Society. In 1907, when a National Arbitration and Peace Congress convened in New York City, it was the largest peace gathering in the history of the United States. Its 1,200 delegates included cabinet officers, supreme court justices, senators, the governor of New York, and prominent figures in business and in the labor movement.
The onset of World War I, in 1914, led to a great upsurge of the peace movement, especially in New York City. Although the United States was at that time neutral in the conflict, a group of editors, social workers, and religious leaders began meeting at Lillian Wald’s Henry Street Settlement to consider the war and its dangers for social reform. Amid a rising call for U.S. military intervention in the conflict and President Woodrow Wilson’s pressure for a U.S. military buildup, they organized the Anti-Preparedness Committee, headed by Crystal Eastman, in 1915. By 1916, the New York City-based organization had 15,000 members, had distributed over half a million pieces of antiwar literature, and had renamed itself the American Union Against Militarism (AAUM).
The new AAUM quickly became the key organization in the nationwide drive to prevent American entry into the world war. In April 1916, it held a mass antiwar meeting in Carnegie Hall, where Lillian Wald was flanked by representatives of the labor movement, social workers, the National Grange, and church organizations. This New York City peace rally was followed by others in over half a dozen other large cities. Although President Wilson ran for re-election that fall, employing the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War,” his actions in early 1917 seemed to be moving the nation toward military intervention. In response to this, the AAUM stepped up its activities, expanded its staff, filled Madison Square Garden with a mass protest meeting, and sponsored antiwar rallies all across the country. But, in April 1917, Wilson called upon Congress for a declaration of war, and most of Congress complied.
With the United States now plunged into the conflict, the AAUM crumbled rapidly. In part, this reflected the belief of some of its leaders that, with the Congressional declaration of war, their opposition to the conflict should stop. But it also reflected the fact that the federal and state government now launched a massive crackdown on dissenters that imprisoned thousands of individuals, shut down organizations, censored newspapers, deported critics, imprisoned, tortured, and sometimes killed conscientious objectors, and encouraged vigilante action. At Columbia University and at other educational institutions, faculty members critical of the war were fired. Some of this repression actually had a positive outcome. Faculty organized the American Association of University Professors to safeguard academic freedom through the establishment of tenure. And the new secretary of the AAUM, Roger Baldwin, formed a Civil Liberties Bureau, which became the American Civil Liberties Union.
Other peace groups managed to survive the war. Perhaps the largest of them was the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Organized as the Woman’s Peace Party in January 1915 at a meeting of 3,000 women called by Jane Addams (the nation’s settlement house pioneer) and Carrie Chapman Catt (a leader of the women’s suffrage movement), the new organization argued that neutral countries should serve as mediators in the world war. That April, it dispatched a U.S. delegation to the Hague for an International Congress of Women that endorsed the idea of neutral mediation and elected Addams president of an International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace. For a time, Addams and other leaders hoped that President Wilson would implement the idea, and Addams did meet with Wilson to urge this course upon him.
After the war, the name of this international organization was changed to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Addams was elected its first president, and the U.S. branch, initially headquartered in New York City, became its strongest. Both Addams and a later WILPF president, Emily Greene Balch, received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work, and the international organization, including the U.S. branch, remains an active part of today’s peace movement.
Another long-term peace group formed during the world war was the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), which provided a haven for religious pacifists. Its origin, in 1914, lay in the decision of two friends―one British and the other German―not to be divided from one another by their countries’ murderous military conflict. Launched in Britain, the FOR developed an American counterpart, in Garden City, New York, in November 1915. It members included Quakers, leaders in the YMCA, and social gospel clergymen. Although the Americans did not intend to create an action organization, some of its leaders worked in the broader campaigns against military preparedness and, later, against U.S. intervention in the world war. As the movement spread to other nations, the International FORwas born, with the American branch settling down in New York City. The FOR went on to become the leading voice for religious pacifism in the United States, attracting prominent figures that ranged from Reinhold Niebuhr, to A.J. Muste, to Martin Luther King, Jr. Decades later, the FOR moved a bit upstate to Nyack, New York, where it shed its exclusively Protestant orientation by creating peace fellowships among Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and other religious groups.
In 1923, yet another pacifist organization emerged in the United States: the War Resisters League (WRL). Founded by Jessie Wallace Hughan, a New York City schoolteacher and socialist, the WRL was designed to unite political, humanitarian, and philosophical objectors to war. It was developed as the secular counterpart to the FOR, and sought to enroll conscientious objectors with the credo: “War is a crime against humanity. We therefore are determined not to support any kind of war and to strive for the removal of all causes of war.” The WRL was particularly popular among Socialists, anarchists, and independent radicals, and established its headquarters in Lower Manhattan, where it is still located. Like WILPF and the FOR, it became the U.S. branch of a worldwide organization―in this case, the War Resisters’ International. Over the years, many prominent figures have given their public support to the WRL, including Albert Einstein, Bayard Rustin, and Daniel Ellsberg. It has been particularly effective in developing and popularizing the tactics of nonviolent resistance.
In 1933, Peter Maurin (an itinerant French peasant philosopher) and Dorothy Day (a longtime writer and leftwing activist) launched the Catholic Worker movement on New York City’s Lower East Side. Although the Catholic Worker movement focused primarily on aiding the downtrodden through the creation of Houses of Hospitality for the poor in the nation’s cities and through the establishment of farming communes in rural regions, it also commenced an unrelenting Catholic critique of war and conscription, heavily publicized through its inexpensive newspaper, the Catholic Worker. In the following decades, America’s Catholic church hierarchy was never quite comfortable with the Catholic Worker movement, particularly its staunch pacifism (which challenged the church’s rather elastic “just war” theory), and a very uneasy relationship usually prevailed between the two. In the meantime, though, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement helped spark the development of what is often referred to as the Catholic Left. Its best-known adherents are probably Daniel and Philip Berrigan, but it also attracted many radical pacifist priests and nuns. Michael Harrington also drew his inspiration, as the nation’s foremost Socialist and anti-poverty crusader, from employment at the Catholic Worker’s House of Hospitality on the Lower East Side.
Of course, there were other peace and peace-oriented organizations―including the American Friends Service Committee, the Committee on Militarism in Education, and the Friends Committee on National Legislation―formed during the first half of the twentieth century. But those discussed here at length were certainly among the most important ones, and they were all closely associated with New York City.
Although the American peace movement largely collapsed with the advent of World War II, it experienced a small-scale revival in the war’s aftermath. The Second World War was the most devastating military conflict in world history, slaughtering more than 50 million people and leaving large portions of the globe in ruins. Moreover, it ended with the U.S. government’s use of the atomic bomb to annihilate two Japanese cities―a clear indication that, if nations continued their ages-old practice of settling their disputes through war, the world was headed for catastrophe.
These developments not only gave new relevance to groups like the WILPF, the FOR, the WRL, and the Catholic Worker, but served as the backdrop for the dramatic growth of the world government movement. United World Federalists (UWF), founded in 1947, was the largest of the new world government organizations, and, within a few years, it had some 50,000 members in the United States. Calling for transforming the United Nations into a genuine world federation, UWF―headquartered in New York City―had the support of numerous prominent writers, politicians, businessmen, and labor leaders and, for a brief time, had significant clout in state governments and in Congress. But, with the intensification of the Cold War, it experienced a serious decline in membership and influence, as did the smaller pacifist groups.
Even so, the nuclear arms race―and particularly its clearest manifestation, the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons―sparked the peace movement’s revival in the late 1950s. In June 1957, a group of prominent Americans, called together by Norman Cousins (publisher of the Saturday Review of Literature) and Clarence Pickett (the long-time secretary of the American Friends Service Committee), met in New York City’s Overseas Press Club to discuss what should be done about the nuclear menace. They decided to begin with a campaign to end nuclear weapons testing, and they adopted, as their name, the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. The name was suggested by Erich Fromm, a prominent New York City psychoanalyst and critic of militarism. “The normal drive for survival has been put out of action by present propaganda,” Fromm declared. “We must try to bring the voice of sanity to the people.”
SANE, as it was soon called, launched its antinuclear campaign in November 1957, with a full-page advertisement in the New York Times, headed: “We Are Facing a Danger Unlike Any Danger That Has Ever Existed.” Calling for the immediate suspension of nuclear weapons testing, SANE’s ad declared that the “challenge of the age is to develop the concept of a higher loyalty”―a loyalty “to the human community.” Although SANE was intended by its founders to serve a temporary, educational purpose, the response to the advertisement was so widespread that SANE became a permanent organization, headquartered in midtown Manhattan. By the summer of 1958, SANE had about 130 chapters (about half of them in the New York City metropolitan area) representing 25,000 Americans. Ultimately, President Kennedy called upon Cousins, as the co-chair of SANE, the largest peace group in the United States, to smooth the path for a nuclear test ban treaty with Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union. This effort came to fruition with the negotiation and signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963.
Given the widespread dismay with the prospect of nuclear war in the late 1950s and early 1960s, other antinuclear campaigns also arose. One of them, in New York City, developed in opposition to civil defense drills, which peace activists criticized as providing no more than an illusion of safety. In 1955, activists from New York City’s pacifist groups began publicly resisting participation in the city’s annual civil defense drill by refusing to take shelter. By 1960, this civil disobedience campaign had been broadened to the extent that approximately 2,000 people resisted the yearly drill. Some 500 gathered in City Hall Park in a standoff with police, while students at City College, Queens College, Brooklyn College, and New York high schools also defied authorities by refusing participation. Faced with this kind of public resistance, the New York City government simply abandoned its civil defense drills.
As most Americans know, protest against the Vietnam War was widespread in the United States, and was certainly not confined to New York City. Nevertheless, New York played a central role in the protest campaign. One of the first antiwar demonstrations in the nation occurred in December 1964 in Greenwich Village, when three grand old men of the American peace movement―pacifist leader A.J. Muste, Socialist leader Norman Thomas, and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph―denounced the war before a rally of 1,500 people. After the Johnson administration escalated the war by dispatching U.S. combat forces in February 1965, there were demonstrations at the United Nations, on New York college campuses, and elsewhere. Defying Congressional legislation that imposed a five-year prison term on anyone who burned a draft card, young men burned them publicly that November in Union Square. Leading peace activists organized the Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee, which began staging mass antiwar marches through the center of Manhattan. In April 1967, an estimated 125,000 peace demonstrators in New York City surged through the driving rain to the United Nations. Denouncing the war, Martin Luther King, Jr. declared:
This madness must cease. . . . I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.
The massive protest campaign against the Vietnam War finally forced U.S. withdrawal from the conflict and an end to the war in 1973. And this, in turn, enabled the American peace movement to redirect its energies toward an issue that had deeply troubled it ever since 1945: the nuclear arms race and the threat of global annihilation. This return to the nuclear weapons issue was accelerated by the revival of the Cold War and the accession to power of hawkish politicians, especially Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States. Assailing the nuclear arms control and disarmament measures of the past, the Reaganites promised a major nuclear weapons buildup, depicted the Soviet Union as the source of all evil in the world, and talked glibly of waging and winning a nuclear war. The result was the eruption of the largest, most widespread peace movement in world history.
In the United States, older organizations like SANE―as well as newer ones like Physicians for Social Responsibility―grew rapidly. In June 1982, nearly a million Americans turned out for a rally against the nuclear arms race, the largest demonstration of any kind up to that point in American history. Meanwhile, the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, designed to stop the nuclear arms race through a Soviet-American agreement to halt the testing, development, and deployment of nuclear weapons, drew the backing of most peace groups, major unions, and mainstream religious bodies. Despite efforts by the Reagan administration to discredit the Freeze movement, polls found that it drew the support of 70 to 80 percent of the public. In the fall of 1982, a majority of voters backed the Freeze in nine of the ten states where it appeared on the ballot. In 1984, it was made part of the Democratic Party’s presidential campaign platform. Ultimately, the movement, in the United States and abroad, was powerful enough to transform public policy. Not only was nuclear war averted, but Soviet and American officials, turning from confrontation to an unprecedented love fest, began signing the first nuclear disarmament agreements in world history. Ronald Reagan, who entered office roaring like a belligerent lion, ended his presidency bleating like a pacifist lamb.
For a number of reasons, the peace movement uprising of the late 1970s and 1980s was less centered in New York than were previous peace movement campaigns. This decline of New York’s central role reflected, in part, the fact that the movement against nuclear weapons had such widespread appeal that it took root in cities and states around the country. But the movement’s ubiquity also reflected a very conscious decision by the leaders of the most powerful new peace movement organization, the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, to set up their organizational headquarters in the nation’s “heartland,” rather than in more traditional places, such as New York City. Thus, for public relations purposes, the Freeze campaign established its headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. St. Louis had never been a peace movement stronghold, but it could now serve as a symbol that the peace movement had transcended its New York provincialism to become an all-American phenomenon.
Although there was some truth to the symbolism, the fact remains that New York―particularly New York City―has continued to serve as a key player in the American peace movement. After all, that record-breaking June 1982 antinuclear demonstration of nearly a million people took place not in Missouri, or South Dakota, or Mississippi, or Wyoming but in New York, and specifically in New York City’s Central Park. New York City also invariably provided the site of the peace movement’s largest, nationwide demonstrations against the Iraq War, as well as other large demonstrations championing nuclear disarmament. Moreover, today, New York City, supplemented by other parts of New York State, continues to house the headquarters of numerous peace organizations, including United for Peace and Justice, the FOR, the Catholic Worker, the WRL, Iraq Veterans Against the War, the Jewish Peace Fellowship, the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, and the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship. National peace organizations establishing their headquarters elsewhere often maintain branch offices in New York City. These include Peace Action, the largest peace organization in the United States, which has its headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland (just outside of Washington, DC), but whose second largest affiliate, Peace Action of New York State, is headquartered in Lower Manhattan. And, by the way, Peace Action of New York State not only has chapters in New York City, but throughout New York State, from Long Island right on out to Buffalo.
All of this brings us to an interesting question: Why has New York played a central role in the American peace movement?
Could it be the case that New York State is disproportionately peace-minded because it is the home of a large number of members of two traditionally peace-minded religious groups, the Quakers and the Unitarians? The evidence fails to support this hypothesis. A 1990 study found that only 4,346 Quakers lived in the State of New York, and that they comprised only about .02 percent of the state’s population. Quakers in Indiana, a state with a much smaller population, were far more numerous, but Indiana has never been a center of peace movement agitation. The same study found that Unitarians were more numerous than Quakers in New York State, numbering 13,648. But this still meant that they only comprised about .08 percent of the population, and that New York placed far down on the list of states with a high percentage of Unitarians.
A more significant factor is probably New York’s cosmopolitanism. New York has always had a relatively large immigrant population, and the international values such immigrants have brought with them to the United States have probably cooled the nationalist fervor that has so often undergirded wars against other nations. New York City, of course, with its Statue of Liberty, has long provided a particular haven to people from other lands. And, even today, New York and California are the two states in the nation with the largest percentage of immigrants in their population.
The location of the United Nations in New York City reinforces the city’s cosmopolitanism and, also, provides a focal point for demonstrations against wars and in support of disarmament. The UN special sessions on disarmament of the past, as well as the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conferences, have inspired mass meetings and major demonstrations in New York City calling for nuclear disarmament.
Another explanation for New York’s importance is its large population. New York City has long been the nation’s most populous urban center, while, until fairly recently, New York State has had the largest population of any state. It is not surprising, then, that peace organizations would set up their headquarters in New York City or that they would choose that city for their nationwide peace and nuclear disarmament rallies.
Nevertheless, population is clearly not the only factor behind New York’s prominence in the peace movement. Other large American cities―including Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, and Dallas―have never been hubs of peace movement activism. Also, when it comes to states, California now has twice the population of New York, while Texas is more populous and Florida has roughly the same population. If population explained everything, then peace activism in Texas and Florida would rival or surpass that of New York. But that is not the case.
Yet another factor behind New York’s prominence in the American peace movement is its large educated middle class. Scholars who have studied the peace movement in the United States and elsewhere have often called attention to that movement’s disproportionately large educated middle class constituency, particularly in what are called the helping professions. And, in fact, teachers, students, social workers, librarians, clergy, artists, writers, scientists, lawyers, healthcare workers, and civil servants have provided the backbone of the American peace movement. New York State, especially New York City, is blessed with a very large number of educational institutions. In addition to the many fine private colleges and universities in New York, the State University of New York is the largest higher educational institution in the United States, while the City University of New York also employs and educates very large numbers of New Yorkers. As a result, New York has an unusually large educated middle class, the key constituency of the American peace movement.
Finally, New York’s relatively liberal values and politics also help to explain the state’s prominence in the peace movement. Peace movement membership and activism in the United States have for many years roughly correlated with the progressivism of the region. Thus, not surprisingly, the peace movement has been weak to non-existent in the reactionary states of the Old Confederacy and strong in the Northeast, the Middle West, and on the West Coast. Those areas of strength are pretty much where Peace Action, the largest peace organization in the United States, has its state and regional affiliates today. In fact, the two largest Peace Action affiliates are in California and New York. New York State, of course, is one of the most liberal states in the nation (as is California), and New York City provides the core of the state’s progressive politics. Indeed, New York City has long been a center of dissident groups and ideas, with organizations championing socialism, anarchism, unions, women’s liberation, racial equality, gay and lesbian rights, and other causes. Peace activists fit rather nicely into this reformist milieu.
What, then, can we conclude? First, it seems clear that New York State―particularly its largest city―has played a central role in the long history of the American peace movement. Of course, peace activism has emerged throughout the United States. But it has never been distributed equally. Second, New York’s prominence in the American peace movement seems to reflect a variety of factors, most notably its cosmopolitanism, its large population, its educated middle class, and its relatively liberal political culture.
So watch out, all you Americans out there in the provinces! As you always feared, New Yorkers are engaged in a great conspiracy―a 200-year conspiracy to create a more peaceful world.
– See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/158696#sthash.bvdmVD27.dpuf
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February 9th, 2015
By Lawrence S. Wittner.
Within a matter of months, the U.S. government seems likely to become the only nation in the world still rejecting the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Sometimes called “the most ratified human rights treaty in history,” the Convention has been ratified by 195 nations, leaving the United States and South Sudan as the only holdouts. South Sudan is expected to move forward with ratification later this year. But there is no indication that the United States will approve this children’s defense treaty.
In the words of Human Rights Watch, the Convention establishes “global standards to ensure the protection, survival, and development of all children, without discrimination. Countries that ratify the treaty pledge to protect children from economic and sexual exploitation, violence, and other forms of abuse, and to advance the rights of children to education, health care, and a decent standard of living.”
It is hard to imagine why the U.S. government, which often lectures other countries about their human rights violations, should object to these humane standards for the protection of children. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush played an important role in drafting the treaty, which was signed by the U.S. government in 1995. Although the U.S. Senate has never ratified (or even considered ratifying) the pact, U.S. ratification is endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Association of University Women, the American Baptist Churches, the American Bar Association, the Catholic Health Association of the United States, the Child Welfare League of America, Church Women United, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, Kiwanis, the National Education Association, the United Food & Commercial Workers, the United Methodist Church, and about a hundred other organizations.
What, then, is the problem? The problem is that treaty ratification requires support from two-thirds of the U.S. Senate―a level of support that has been lacking thanks to Republican Party opposition and, especially, the fierce hostility of the conservative Republican base, including groups like the Christian Coalition, the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and the John Birch Society.
A key allegation of conservatives is that the Convention “poses a serious threat to parental rights.” In fact, though, as Human Rights Watch observes, the treaty “refers repeatedly to the rights and responsibilities of parents to raise and provide guidance for their children.” Indeed, 19 articles of the treaty explicitly recognize the importance of parents and family in children’s lives.
In addition, conservatives argue that the Convention, as an international treaty, would override the Constitution of the United States, as well as federal and state legislation, thereby destroying American sovereignty. And, in fairness to the critics, it must be acknowledged that some current American laws do clash with the Convention’s child protection features. For example, in the United States, children under the age of 18 can be jailed for life, with no possibility of parole. Also, as Human Rights Watch notes, “exemptions in U.S. child labor laws allow children as young as 12 to be put to work in agriculture for long hours and under dangerous conditions.” Moreover, the treaty prohibits cruel and degrading punishment of children―a possible source of challenge to the one-third of U.S. states that still allow corporal punishment in their schools. But most U.S. laws are thoroughly in line with the Convention.
Perhaps the underlying objection of conservatives is that the Convention calls for government action to promote the health, education, and welfare of children. And conservatives oppose such action for everyone, including children, often quite effectively. Thus, despite America’s vast wealth, it ranks near the bottom of industrialized nations in child poverty (one out of six children), the gap between rich and poor, low birth weight, infant mortality, child victims of gun violence, and the number of children in jail.
Given the conservative opposition to the Convention, it is ironic that, even if it were ratified by the U.S. Senate, it would have little immediate impact upon the United States. As Amnesty International points out, “the Convention contains no controlling language or mandates,” and “no treaty can `override’ our Constitution.” Any changes in U.S. law would be implemented through federal and state legislation in a timeframe determined by the U.S. legislative process. Nor would any changes in American laws necessarily occur, for the U.S. government generally ratifies human rights treaties with the qualification that they not override existing American laws. In addition, “the United States can reject or attach clarifying language to any specific provision of the Convention.”
Even so, U.S. ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child would have an important effect on the treatment of children in the United States, just as the ratification of the Convention has affected behavior in other lands, for it would establish agreed-upon guidelines. Like other human rights treaties, the Convention would set humane standards that can be invoked in calling for appropriate government action. Kul Chandra Gautam, a former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, has termed it “a moral compass, a framework of accountability against which all societies can assess their treatment of the new generations.”
Praising the treaty, Anthony Lake, UNICEF Executive Director and a former White House National Security Advisor, stated recently: “The central message of the Convention is that every child deserves a fair start in life. What can be more important than that?”
Unfortunately, some Americans don’t think giving children “a fair start in life” is important at all.
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January 27th, 2015
By Lawrence S. Wittner.
A quarter century after the end of the Cold War and decades after the signing of landmark nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements, are the U.S. and Russian governments once more engaged in a potentially disastrous nuclear arms race with one another? It certainly looks like it.
With approximately 15,000 nuclear weapons between them, the United States and Russia already possess about 93 percent of the world’s nuclear arsenal, thus making them the world’s nuclear hegemons. But, apparently, like great powers throughout history, they do not consider their vast military might sufficient, especially in the context of their growing international rivalry.
Although, in early 2009, President Barack Obama announced his “commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” the U.S. government today has moved well along toward implementing an administration plan for U.S. nuclear “modernization.” This entails spending $355 billion over a ten-year period for a massive renovation of U.S. nuclear weapons plants and laboratories.
Moreover, the cost is scheduled to soar after this renovation, when an array of new nuclear weapons will be produced. “That’s where all the big money is,” noted Ashton Carter, recently nominated as U.S. Secretary of Defense. “By comparison, everything that we’re doing now is cheap.” The Obama administration has asked the Pentagon to plan for 12 new nuclear missile-firing submarines, up to 100 new nuclear bombers, and 400 land-based nuclear missiles. According to outside experts and a bipartisan, independent panel commissioned by Congress and the Defense Department, that will bring the total price tag for the U.S. nuclear weapons buildup to approximately $1 trillion.
For its part, the Russian government seems determined to match―or surpass―that record. With President Vladimir Putin eager to use nuclear weapons as a symbol of Russian influence, Moscow is building, at great expense, new generations of giant ballistic missile submarines, as well as nuclear attack submarines that are reportedly equal or superior to their U.S. counterparts in performance and stealth. Armed with nuclear-capable cruise missiles, they periodically make forays across the Atlantic, heading for the U.S. coast. Deeply concerned about the potential of these missiles to level a surprise attack, the U.S. military has already launched the first of two experimental “blimps” over Washington, DC, designed to help detect them.
The Obama administration also charges that Russian testing of a new medium-range cruise missile is a violation of the 1987 INF treaty. Although the Russian government denies the existence of the offending missile, its rhetoric has been less than diplomatic. As the Ukraine crisis developed, Putin told a public audience that “Russia is one of the leading nuclear powers,” and foreign nations “should understand it’s best not to mess with us.” Pravda was even more inflammatory. In an article published in November titled “Russia prepares a nuclear surprise for NATO,” it bragged about Russia’s alleged superiority over the United States in nuclear weaponry.
Not surprisingly, the one nuclear disarmament agreement signed between the U.S. and Russian governments since 2003―the New START treaty of 2011―is being implemented remarkably slowly. New START, designed to reduce the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons (the most powerful ones) in each country by 30 percent by 2018, has not led to substantial reductions in either nation’s deployed nuclear arsenal. Indeed, between March and October 2014, the two nations each increased their deployed nuclear forces. Also, they maintain large arsenals of nuclear weapons targeting one another, with about 1,800 of them on high alert―ready to be launched within minutes against the populations of both nations.
The souring of relations between the U.S. and Russian governments has been going on for years, but it has reached a very dangerous level during the current confrontation over Ukraine. In their dealings with this conflict-torn nation, there’s plenty of fault on both sides. U.S. officials should have recognized that any Russian government would have been angered by NATO’s steady recruitment of East European countries―especially Ukraine, which had been united with Russia in the same nation until recently, was sharing a common border with Russia, and was housing one of Russia’s most important naval bases (in Crimea). For their part, Russian officials had no legal basis for seizing and annexing Crimea or aiding heavily-armed separatists in the eastern portion of Ukraine.
But however reckless the two nuclear behemoths have been, this does not mean that they have to continue this behavior. Plenty of compromise formulas exist―for example, leaving Ukraine out of NATO, altering that country’s structure to allow for a high degree of self-government in the war-torn east, and organizing a UN-sponsored referendum in Crimea. And possibilities for compromise also exist in other areas of U.S.-Russian relations.
Failing to agree to a diplomatic settlement of these and other issues will do more than continue violent turmoil in Ukraine. Indeed, the disastrous, downhill slide of both the United States and Russia into a vastly expensive nuclear arms race will bankrupt them and, also, by providing an example of dependence on nuclear might, encourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons to additional nations. After all, how can they succeed in getting other countries to forswear developing nuclear weapons when―47 years after the U.S. and Soviet governments signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in which they pledged their own nuclear disarmament―their successors are engaged in yet another nuclear arms race? Finally, of course, this new arms race, unless checked, seems likely to lead, sooner or later, to a nuclear catastrophe of immense proportions.
Can the U.S. and Russian governments calm down, settle their quarrels peacefully, and return to a policy of nuclear disarmament? Let’s hope so.
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January 7th, 2015
By Lawrence S. Wittner.
Now that the Republican Party―the conservative voice in mainstream U.S. electoral politics―has attained the most thoroughgoing control of Congress that it has enjoyed since 1928, it’s an appropriate time to take a good look at modern conservatism.
Conservatives have performed some useful services for Americans over the course of U.S. history. Alexander Hamilton placed the nation’s financial credit on a much firmer basis during the late eighteenth century. Determined to make knowledge available to all Americans, Andrew Carnegie funded the development of the free U.S. public library system in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During the early twentieth century, Elihu Root and other conservatives played key roles in the establishment of international law. Also, in the mid-twentieth century, Robert Taft staunchly denounced the peacetime military draft, arguing that it smacked of a totalitarian state.
But, increasingly, modern American conservatism resembles a giant wrecking ball, powered by hate-spewing demagogues to undermine or destroy long-cherished institutions, from the U.S. Post Office (established by Benjamin Franklin in 1775 and enshrined in the U.S. Constitution) to minimum wage laws (which began to appear on the state level in the early twentieth century). Sadly, the rhetoric of modern conservatism―focused on small government, free enterprise, and individual liberty―seems ever more divorced from its behavior. Indeed, conservatism’s rhetoric and its behavior are often quite contradictory.
Is this allegation fair? There certainly seem to be plenty of discrepancies between words and deeds, and conservatives should be asked to explain them. For example:
1. As opponents of “big government,” why do you fervently support an unending stream of government-sponsored wars, vast government military spending, the power of local police to shoot and kill unarmed citizens, government interference with abortion rights and family planning, government restrictions on marriage, and the linkage of church and state?
2. As advocates of “consumer sovereignty,” why do you oppose requiring corporations to label their products with information (for example, “contains GMOs”) that would enable consumers to make an intelligent choice of products?
3. As advocates of personal advancement through individual effort, why do you oppose inheritance taxes that would place the children of rich and poor on a more equal footing in their struggle for personal success?
4. As advocates of capitalist competition in the marketplace, why do you so consistently support the interests of giant corporations over those of small businesses?
5. As advocates of the “private enterprise system,” why do you so often favor government subsidies to failing big businesses and tax breaks to thriving big businesses that you desire to lure into your state or region?
6. As advocates of freedom to choose to work for an employer (“freedom of contract”), why do you oppose employees’ right to stop working for that employer―that is, to strike―and particularly to strike against the government?
7. As advocates of voluntary (rather than government) action to redress grievances, why do you so fervently oppose labor unions?
8. As advocates of the free movement of labor and capital, why do you support government immigration restrictions, including the construction of enormous walls, the massive policing of borders, and the building of mass incarceration centers?
9. As critics of statism, why don’t you oppose government loyalty oaths, flag drills, and pledges of allegiance?
10. As advocates of “freedom,” why are you not at the forefront of the fight against government torture, political surveillance, and censorship?
If these contradictions can’t be explained satisfactorily, then we have good reason to conclude that the professed principles of conservatives are no more than a respectable mask behind which lurk less admirable motives―for example, that support for wars and military spending reflects a desire to dominate the world and its resources, that support for police shoot-to-kill policies and crackdowns on immigrants reflects hostility toward racial minorities, that opposition to abortion rights and family planning reflects hostility toward women, that support for government meddling in religious matters reflects hostility toward religious minorities and nonbelievers, that opposition to product labeling, indifference to small businesses, subsidies to big businesses, and opposition to strikes and unions reflect a loyalty to corporations, that opposition to inheritance taxes reflects an alliance with the wealthy, and that support for nationalist hoopla, torture, surveillance, and censorship reflects a repressive, authoritarian mentality. In short, that the real goal of conservatives is the maintenance of economic, gender, racial, and religious privilege, with no scruples about the means of maintaining it.
Actions, of course, speak louder than words, and we will undoubtedly get a good idea of where conservatives stand from the legislation passed by the incoming Republican-dominated Congress. Meanwhile, however, it would be interesting to have conservatives explain these ten contradictions between their professed principles and their behavior.
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December 16th, 2014
By Lawrence S. Wittner.
Click here to find out which historians earn the most money as university presidents
In a recent article about Shirley Jackson, the president since 1999 of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)―a private university located in Troy, New York―the Chronicle of Higher Education revealed that, in 2012 (the latest year for which statistics are available), she received over $7 million from that institution. Like many modern campus administrators, President Jackson was also given a large mansion, first class air travel, and a chauffeured luxury car to transport her around the campus.
Thanks to the fact that Jackson also serves on at least five corporate boards, including those of IBM and Marathon Oil, she supplements this income with more than a million dollars a year from these sources.
Despite repeated complaints about Jackson from faculty and students, RPI’s board of trustees has invariably expressed its total confidence in her. Indeed, the board chair recently declared that she is worth every penny of her substantial income. This unwavering support appears to be based not only upon Jackson’s fundraising prowess, but upon the corporate approach that she and the board share.
A key component of this corporate approach is embodied in Jackson’s development and implementation of the Rensselaer Plan, a venture that includes an enormous construction program at a staggering cost. Worried about their institution falling behind rivals in the race to build a high-powered, modern campus, trustees found this university expansion deeply satisfying. But it also meant that RPI ran up its debt to $828 million―over six times its level when Jackson took office. As a result, Moody’s downgraded RPI’s credit rating twice, and describes the financial outlook for RPI as “negative.”
Of course, when operating as a business, there are many ways to pay a top executive’s hefty salary and recoup huge financial losses. As is the practice on other campuses, RPI employs a considerable number of adjunct faculty members―part-timers paid by the course, with pitiful salaries, no benefits, and no guarantee of employment beyond the semester in which they are teaching. One of these adjuncts, Elizabeth Gordon, was paid $4,000 a course―about $10 an hour by her estimates.
“Because the pay was so low,” she recalled, “it was like being a volunteer serving the community.” But, as the size of her RPI writing classes grew, she became concerned that the pace of grading, student meetings, and course preparation was undermining her health, which she lacked the insurance to cover. So she quit. Many other adjuncts, however, are still at RPI, scraping by on poverty-level wages and enriching President Jackson.
RPI’s adjuncts once had a voice on campus, as some of them served on RPI’s Faculty Senate. But that came to an end in 2007, when Jackson abolished that entity. From the administration’s standpoint, the abolition of the Senate had the welcome effect of not only depriving adjuncts of their minimal influence, but of crippling the power of regular faculty, as well. The previous year, a faculty vote of no confidence in Jackson’s leadership had been only narrowly defeated.
Thus, the administration’s abolition of the Faculty Senate served as a pre-emptive strike. Asked by irate faculty to investigate the situation, the American Association of University Professors condemned the administration’s action as violating the basic principles of shared governance. The administration responded that RPI “has never recognized the role of the AAUP in what we regard as an internal issue.” Ultimately, faculty resistance collapsed, leaving faculty powerlessness and demoralization in its wake.
The Jackson administration, using what union organizers charged were tactics of intimidation, also succeeded in defeating efforts to unionize RPI’s downtrodden campus janitors and cafeteria workers. During one union campaign among janitors, the lead organizer recalled, security guards threw him off campus and the administration fired a janitor on the organizing committee.
In a further effort to cover the administration’s costly priorities, student tuition was raised substantially during the Jackson years. In 2013-14, it reached $45,100―$25,608 above the average tuition at New York’s four-year colleges. Of course, beyond tuition, there are expenses for college fees, room, board, and books, placing RPI’s own estimate of student costs for attendance in 2014-2015 at $64,194. Perhaps to soften the blow to students of this enormous price tag or to signal them about what type of school this is, the RPI web page remarks helpfully that “many of our professors have close ties with top global corporations.”
Having created the very model of an undemocratic, corporate university, President Jackson is appropriately imperious. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, she has a series of rules that are clear to everyone. These include: 1) Only she is authorized to set the temperature in conference rooms; 2) Cabinet members all rise when she enters the room; 3) If food is served at a meeting, vice presidents clear her plate; and 4) She is always to be publicly introduced as “The Honorable Shirley Ann Jackson.” Falling into rages on occasion, she publicly abuses her staff and frequently remarks: “You know, I could fire you all.”
In 2011, RPI’s Student Senate passed a resolution criticizing her “abrasive style,” “top-down leadership,” and the climate of “fear” she had instilled among administrators and staff. It even called upon RPI’s board of trustees to consider Jackson’s removal from office. But, once again, the board merely rallied in her defense.
Perhaps, though, the response of the board of trustees is not surprising. After all, developments at RPI are very much in line with trends at institutions of higher education: inflating administration salaries; exploiting adjunct faculty, regular faculty, and other workers; strengthening administration power; raising tuition to astronomical heights; and, above all, running colleges and universities like modern business enterprises. RPI actually presents us with a glimpse of the future of higher education―a future that we might not like very much.
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November 18th, 2014
By Lawrence S. Wittner.
U.S. politicians and pundits are fond of saying that America’s wars have defended America’s freedom. But the historical record doesn’t bear out this contention. In fact, over the past century, U.S. wars have triggered major encroachments upon civil liberties.
Shortly after the United States entered World War I, seven states passed laws abridging freedom of speech and freedom of the press. In June 1917, they were joined by Congress, which passed the Espionage Act. This law granted the federal government the power to censor publications and ban them from the mail, and made the obstruction of the draft or of enlistment in the armed forces punishable by a hefty fine and up to 20 years’ imprisonment. Thereafter, the U.S. government censored newspapers and magazines while conducting prosecutions of the war’s critics, sending over 1,500 to prison with lengthy sentences.
This included the prominent labor leader and Socialist Party presidential candidate, Eugene V. Debs. Meanwhile, teachers were fired from the public schools and universities, elected state and federal legislators critical of the war were prevented from taking office, and religious pacifists who refused to carry weapons after they were drafted into the armed forces were forcibly clad in uniform, beaten, stabbed with bayonets, dragged by ropes around their necks, tortured, and killed. It was the worst outbreak of government repression in U.S. history, and sparked the formation of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Although America’s civil liberties record was much better during World War II, the nation’s participation in that conflict did lead to serious infringements upon American freedoms. Probably the best-known was the federal government’s incarceration of 110,000 people of Japanese heritage in internment camps. Two-thirds of them were U.S. citizens, most of whom had been born (and many of whose parents had been born) in the United States.
In 1988, recognizing the blatant unconstitutionality of the wartime internment, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act, which apologized for the action and paid reparations to the survivors and their families. But the war led to other violations of rights, as well, including the imprisonment of roughly 6,000 conscientious objectors and the confinement of some 12,000 others in Civilian Public Service camps. Congress also passed the Smith Act, which made the advocacy of the overthrow of the government a crime punishable by 20 years’ imprisonment. As this legislation was used to prosecute and imprison members of groups that merely talked abstractly of revolution, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately narrowed its scope considerably.
The civil liberties situation worsened considerably with the advent of the Cold War. In Congress, the House Un-American Activities Committee gathered files on over a million Americans whose loyalty it questioned and held contentious hearings designed to expose alleged subversives. Jumping into the act, Senator Joseph McCarthy began reckless, demagogic accusations of Communism and treason, using his political power and, later, a Senate investigations subcommittee, to defame and intimidate.
The president, for his part, established the Attorney General’s List of “subversive” organizations, as well as a federal Loyalty Program, which dismissed thousands of U.S. public servants from their jobs. The compulsory signing of loyalty oaths became standard practice on the federal, state, and local level. By 1952, 30 states required some sort of loyalty oath for teachers. Although this effort to root out “un-Americans” never resulted in the discovery of a single spy or saboteur, it did play havoc with people’s lives and cast a pall of fear over the nation.
When citizen activism bubbled up in the form of protest against the Vietnam War, the federal government responded with a stepped-up program of repression. J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director, had been expanding his agency’s power ever since World War I, and swung into action with his COINTELPRO program.
Designed to expose, disrupt, and neutralize the new wave of activism by any means necessary, COINTELPRO spread false, derogatory information about dissident leaders and organizations, created conflicts among their leaders and members, and resorted to burglary and violence. It targeted nearly all social change movements, including the peace movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the environmental movement.
The FBI’s files bulged with information on millions of Americans it viewed as national enemies or potential enemies, and it placed many of them under surveillance, including writers, teachers, activists, and U.S. senators Convinced that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a dangerous subversive, Hoover made numerous efforts to destroy him, including encouraging him to commit suicide.
Although revelations about the unsavory activities of U.S. intelligence agencies led to curbs on them in the 1970s, subsequent wars encouraged a new surge of police state measures. In 1981, the FBI opened an investigation of individuals and groups opposing President Reagan’s military intervention in Central America. It utilized informers at political meetings, break-ins at churches, members’ homes, and organizational offices, and surveillance of hundreds of peace demonstrations. Among the targeted groups were the National Council of Churches, the United Auto Workers, and the Maryknoll Sisters of the Roman Catholic Church.
After the beginning of the Global War on Terror, the remaining checks on U.S. intelligence agencies were swept aside. The Patriot Act provided the government with sweeping power to spy on individuals, in some cases without any suspicion of wrongdoing, while the National Security Agency collected all Americans’ phone and internet communications.
The problem here lies not in some unique flaw of the United States but, rather, in the fact that warfare is not conducive to freedom. Amid the heightened fear and inflamed nationalism that accompany war, governments and many of their citizens regard dissent as akin to treason. In these circumstances, “national security” usually trumps liberty. As the journalist Randolph Bourne remarked during World War I: “War is the health of the state.” Americans who cherish freedom should keep this in mind.
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October 13th, 2014
By Lawrence Wittner.
American politicians are fond of telling their audiences that the United States is the greatest country in the world. Is there any evidence for this claim?
Well, yes. When it comes to violence and preparations for violence, the United States is, indeed, No. 1. In 2013, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. government accounted for 37 percent of world military expenditures, putting it far ahead of all other nations. (The two closest competitors, China and Russia, accounted for 11 percent and 5 percent respectively.) From 2004 to 2013, the United States was also the No. 1 weapons exporter in the world. Moreover, given the U.S. government’s almost continuous series of wars and acts of military intervention since 1941, it seems likely that it surpasses all rivals when it comes to international violence.
This record is paralleled on the domestic front, where the United States has more guns and gun-related deaths than any other country. A study released in late 2013 reported that the United States had 88 guns for every 100 people, and 40 gun-related deaths for every 400,000 people―the most of any of the 27 economically developed countries surveyed. By contrast, in Britain there were 6 guns per 100 people and 1 gun-related death per 400,000 people.
Yet, in a great many other areas, the United States is not No. 1 at all.
Take education. In late 2013, the Program for International Student Assessment released a report on how 15-year old students from 65 nations performed on its tests. The report showed that U.S. students ranked 17th in reading and 21st in math. An international survey a bit earlier that year by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that the ranking was slightly worse for American adults. In 2014, Pearson, a multinational educational services company, placed the United States 20th in the world in “educational attainment”―well behind Poland and the Slovak Republic.
American healthcare and health fare even worse. In a 2014 study of healthcare (including infant mortality, healthy life expectancy, and mortality from preventable conditions) in 11 advanced industrial countries, the Commonwealth Fund concluded that the United States ranked last among them. According to the World Health Organization, the U.S. healthcare system ranks 30th in the world. Other studies reach somewhat different conclusions, but all are very unflattering to the United States, as are studies of American health. The United States, for example, has one of the world’s worst cancer rates (the seventh highest), and life expectancy is declining compared to other nations. An article in the Washington Post in late 2013 reported that the United States ranked 26th among nations in life expectancy, and that the average American lifespan had fallen a year behind the international average.
What about the environment? Specialists at Yale University have developed a highly sophisticated Environmental Performance Index to examine the behavior of nations. In the area of protection of human health from environmental harm, their 2014 index placed the United States 35th in health impacts, 36th in water and sanitation, and 38th in air quality. In the other area studied―protection of ecosystems―the United States ranked 32nd in water resources, 49th in climate and energy, 86th in biodiversity and habitat, 96th in fisheries, 107th in forests, and 109th in agriculture.
These and other areas of interest are dealt with by the Social Progress Index, which was developed by Michael Porter, an eminent professor of business (and a Republican) at Harvard. According to Porter and his team, in 2014 the United States ranked 23rd in access to information and communications, 24th in nutrition and basic medical care, 31st in personal safety, 34th in water and sanitation, 39th in access to basic knowledge, 69th in ecosystem sustainability, and 70th in health and wellness.
The widespread extent of poverty, especially among children, remains a disgrace in one of the world’s wealthiest nations. A 2013 report by the United Nations Children’s Fund noted that, of the 35 economically advanced countries that had been studied, only Rumania had a higher percentage of children living in poverty than did the United States.
Of course, the United States is not locked into these dismal rankings and the sad situation they reveal about the health, education, and welfare of its citizens. It could do much better if its vast wealth, resources, and technology were employed differently than they are at present.
Ultimately, it’s a matter of priorities. When most U.S. government discretionary spending goes for war and preparations for war, it should come as no surprise that the United States emerges No. 1 among nations in its capacity for violence and falls far behind other nations in providing for the well-being of its people.
Americans might want to keep this in mind as their nation embarks upon yet another costly military crusade.
– See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/157216#sthash.tFoSOQWj.dpuf
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September 16th, 2014
By Lawrence Wittner.
After thousands of years of bloody wars among contending tribes, regions, and nations, is it finally possible to dispense with the chauvinist ideas of the past?
To judge by President Barack Obama’s televised address on the evening of September 10, it is not. Discussing his plan to “take out” ISIS, the extremist group that has seized control of portions of Syria and Iraq, the president slathered on the high-flying, nationalist rhetoric. “America is better positioned today to seize the future than any other nation on Earth,” he proclaimed. “Our technology companies and universities are unmatched; our manufacturing and auto industries are thriving. Energy independence is closer than it’s been in decades. . . . Our businesses are in the longest uninterrupted stretch of job creation in our history. . . . I see the grit and determination and common goodness of the American people every single day — and that makes me more confident than ever about our country’s future.”
This rhetoric, of course, is the lead-in to yet another American-led war in the Middle East. “American leadership is the one constant in an uncertain world,” he stated. “It is America that has the capacity and the will to mobilize the world against terrorists. It is America that has rallied the world against Russian aggression. . . . It is America that helped remove and destroy Syria’s declared chemical weapons so they cannot pose a threat to the Syrian people — or the world — again. And it is America that is helping Muslim communities around the world not just in the fight against terrorism, but in the fight for opportunity, tolerance, and a more hopeful future.”
America’s greatness, he added, carries “an enduring burden. But as Americans, we welcome our responsibility to lead. From Europe to Asia — from the far reaches of Africa to war-torn capitals of the Middle East — we stand for freedom, for justice, for dignity. These are values that have guided our nation since its founding. Tonight, I ask for your support in carrying that leadership forward. I do so as a Commander-in-Chief who could not be prouder of our men and women in uniform.”
Can anyone acquainted with American history really take this nationalist drivel seriously? When contemplating the “freedom,” “justice,” and “dignity” that “have guided our nation since its founding,” is there no recollection of slavery, the seizure of a continent from its native people, lynching, child labor, the flouting of civil liberties, the exploitation of workers, legalized racial discrimination, and the war crimes committed by U.S. troops, most recently in Iraq?
Furthermore, all of this forgotten history is topped off with the ritualized “May God bless our troops, and may God bless the United States of America.” God, apparently, is supposed to ride shotgun for the U.S. military. Or is it really that the U.S. military and the nation are the emissaries of God?
In fairness to the president, it could be argued that he doesn’t actually believe this claptrap, but — like so many of his predecessors — simply dons a star-spangled uniform to sell his foreign policy to the American public.
But, in fact, the policy outlined in Obama’s speech is almost as nationalist as the rhetoric. Although the president promised that the United States would participate in a “broad coalition to roll back” ISIS, this would be a coalition that “America will lead.” Yes, there would be “partners” in American efforts “to address broader challenges to international order,” but not all the time — only “wherever possible.” In short, Americans should get ready for another Coalition of the Willing, led by the United States and, sometimes, limited to it alone.
Ironically, American “leadership” of military operations in the Islamic world has not only done much to spark the creation of ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other extremist groups, but has destabilized and inflamed the entire region. American-led wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya — coupled with U.S. military meddling in Syria, confrontations with Iran, arming of Israel, and drone strikes in many nations — have left the region awash with anti-Americanism, religious strife, and weapons (many now directed against the United States).
Against this backdrop, the U.S. government would be well-advised to adopt a very low profile in the Middle East — and certainly not “lead” yet another war, particularly one against Muslims. This restraint would mesh nicely with the U.S. government’s signature on the UN charter, which prohibits the use of force by any nation except in self-defense.
The current situation provides a particularly appropriate time for the U.S. government to back off from yet another military crusade in the region. After all, ISIS is heartily disliked by a large number of nations. At the moment, it seems likely that the governments of Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Russia, and other lands would welcome the demise of ISIS and support UN action against it. Furthermore, this action need not be military. The United Nations could play an important role in halting the flow of financing and weapons to this terrorist group. The United Nations could restrict the movement of militias and foreign fighters across borders. The United Nations could resume negotiations to end the civil war in Syria. And, particularly in light of the hostility toward the United States that has developed in recent years among many Muslims, the United Nations could demand the disarmament and dismantling of ISIS with far greater effect that would similar action by the U.S. government.
But can a nation shed its belief that it is uniquely qualified to “lead” the world? It can, if its citizens are ready to cast aside their nationalist illusions and recognize their interdependence with the people of other nations.
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July 8th, 2014
By Lawrence S. Wittner.
Ever since the horrors of submarine warfare became a key issue during World War I, submarines have had a sinister reputation. And the building of new, immensely costly, nuclear-armed submarines by the U.S. government and others may soon raise the level of earlier anxiety to a nuclear nightmare.
This spring, the U.S. government continued its steady escalation of research and development funding for the replacement of its current nuclear submarine fleet through one of the most expensive shipbuilding undertakings in American history — the phasing-in, starting in 2031, of 12 new SSBN(X) submarines. Each of these nuclear-powered vessels, the largest submarines the Navy has ever built, will carry up to16 Trident ballistic missiles fitted with multiple nuclear warheads. All in all, this new submarine fleet is expected to deploy about 1,000 nuclear warheads — 70 percent of U.S. government’s strategic nuclear weapons.
From the standpoint of the U.S. military, nuclear-armed submarines are very attractive. Capable of being placed in hidden locations around the world and remaining submerged for months at a time, they are less vulnerable to attack than are ground-launched or air-launched nuclear weapons, the other two legs of the “nuclear triad.” Moreover, they can wreak massive death and destruction upon “enemy” nations quite rapidly. The Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review of 2014 explained that the U.S. Navy’s future fleet would “deliver the required presence and capabilities and address the most important war-fighting scenarios.”
From the standpoint of civilians, the new Trident submarine fleet is somewhat less appealing. Strategic nuclear weapons are the most destructive weapons in world history, and the use of only one of them over a large city could annihilate millions of people instantly. If the thousands of such weapons available to the U.S. government and other governments were employed in war, they would incinerate most of the planet, reducing it to charred rubble. Thereafter, radioactivity, disease, nuclear winter, and starvation would end most remaining life on earth.
Of course, even in an accident, such weapons could do incredible damage. And, over the years, nuclear-armed submarines have been in numerous accidents. In February 2009, a British and a French submarine, both nuclear-powered and armed with nuclear missiles, collided underwater in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Although the two vessels were fitted with state-or-the-art detection equipment, neither spotted the other until it was too late to avert their collision. Fortunately, they were moving very slowly at the time, and the damage was limited (though enormously expensive to repair). But a sharper collision could have released vast quantities of radioactive fuel and flung their deadly nuclear warheads across the ocean floor.
In addition, when the dangers are so immense, it is worth keeping in mind that people, like the high-tech nuclear submarines, are not always infallible or reliable. Submarine crews — living in cramped quarters, bored, and isolated for months at a time — could well be as plagued by the poor morale, dishonesty, drug use, and incompetence found among their counterparts at land-based nuclear missile facilities.
Taxpayers, particularly, might be concerned about the unprecedented expense of this new submarine fleet. According to most estimates, building the 12 SSBN(X) submarines will cost about $100 billion. And there will be additional expenditures for the missiles, nuclear warheads, and yearly maintenance, bringing the total tab to what the Pentagon estimated, three years ago, at $347 billion. The expected cost is so astronomical, in fact, that the Navy, frightened that this expenditure will prevent it from paying for other portions of its shipbuilding program, has insisted that the money come from a special fund outside of its budget. This spring, Congress took preliminary steps along these lines.
People might be forgiven for feeling some bewilderment at this immense U.S. government investment in a new nuclear weapons system — one slated to last well into the 2070s. After all, back in April 2009, amid much fanfare, President Barack Obama proclaimed “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” This was followed by a similar commitment to a nuclear weapons-free world made by the members of the UN Security Council, including five nuclear-armed nations, among them the United States. But, as this nuclear weapons buildup indicates, such commitments seem to have been tossed down the memory hole.
In arguing for the new Trident submarine fleet, U.S. military leaders have pointed to the fact that other nations are maintaining or building nuclear-armed submarines. And they are correct about that. France and Britain are maintaining their current fleets, although Britain is on the verge of beginning the construction of a new one with U.S. assistance; Israel reportedly possesses one; China is apparently ready to launch one in 2014; India is set to launch its own in 2015; and Pakistan might be working to develop one. Meanwhile, Russia is modernizing its own submarine ballistic missile fleet.
Even so, the current U.S. nuclear-armed submarine fleet is considerably larger than any developed or being developed by other nations. Also, the U.S. government’s new Trident fleet, now on the drawing boards, is slated to be 50 percent larger than the new, modernized Russian fleet and, in addition, far superior technologically. Indeed, other nations currently turning out nuclear-armed submarines – like China and Russia — are reportedly launching clunkers.
In this context, there is an obvious alternative to the current race to deploy the world’s deadliest weapons in the ocean depths. The nuclear powers could halt their building of nuclear-armed submarines and eliminate their present nuclear-armed submarine fleets. This action would not only honor their professed commitment to a nuclear weapons-free world, but would save their nations from making enormous expenditures and from the possibility of experiencing a catastrophe of unparalleled magnitude.
Why not act now, before this arms race to disaster goes any further?
– See more at: http://hnn.us/article/156221#sthash.kFlTAZoa.dpuf
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June 4th, 2014
By Lawrence S. Wittner.
National officials certainly assume that war has a future. According to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, world military expenditures totaled nearly $1.75 trillion in 2013. Although, after accounting for inflation, this is a slight decrease over the preceding year, many countries increased their military spending significantly, including China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. Indeed, 23 countries doubled their military spending between 2004 and 2013. None, of course, came anywhere near to matching the military spending of the United States, which, at $640 billion, accounted for 37 percent of 2013’s global military expenditures. Furthermore, all the nuclear weapons nations are currently “modernizing” their nuclear arsenals.
Meanwhile, countries are not only preparing for wars, but are fighting them―sometimes overtly (as in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan) and sometimes covertly (as in portions of Africa and the Middle East).
Nevertheless, there are some reasons why war might actually be on the way out.
One reason, of course, is its vast destructiveness. Over the past century, conventional wars (including two world wars) have slaughtered over a hundred million people, crippled, blinded, or starved many more, and laid waste to large portions of the globe. And this enormous level of death, misery, and ruin will almost certainly be surpassed by the results of a nuclear war, after which, as Nikita Khrushchev once reportedly commented, the living might envy the dead. After all, Hiroshima was annihilated with one atomic bomb. Today, some 16,400 nuclear weapons are in existence, and most of them are far more powerful than the bomb that obliterated that Japanese city.
Another reason that war has become exceptionally burdensome is its enormous cost. The United States is a very wealthy nation, but when it spends 55 percent of its annual budget on the military, as it now does, it is almost inevitable that its education, health care, housing, parks and recreational facilities, and infrastructure will suffer. That is what the AFL-CIO executive council―far from the most dovish institution in American life―concluded in 2011, when it declared: “There is no way to fund what we must do as a nation without bringing our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. The militarization of our foreign policy has proven to be a costly mistake. It is time to invest at home.” Many Americans seem to agree.
Furthermore, a number of developments on the world scene have facilitated the abolition of war.
One of them is the rise of mass peace movements. Many centuries ago, religious groups and theologians began to criticize war on moral grounds, and non-sectarian peace organizations began to emerge in the early nineteenth century. Even though they never had an easy time of it in a world accustomed to war, these organizations became a very noticeable and, at times, powerful force in the twentieth century and beyond. Drawing upon prominent figures like Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell, sparking new thinking about international relations and world peace, and mobilizing millions of people against war, peace groups created a major social movement that government officials could not entirely ignore.
Another new development―one originally proposed by peace organizations―is the establishment of international institutions to prevent war. The vast destruction wrought by World War I provided a powerful incentive for Woodrow Wilson and other officials to organize the League of Nations to prevent further disasters. Although the League proved too weak and nations too unwilling to limit their sovereignty for this goal to be accomplished, the enormous carnage and chaos of World War II led government officials to give world governance another try. The resulting institution, the United Nations, proved somewhat more successful than the League at averting war and resolving conflicts, but, like its predecessor, suffered from the fact that it remained weak while the ambitions of nations (and particularly those of the great powers) remained strong. Even so, the United Nations now provides an important framework that can be strengthened to foster international law and the peaceful resolution of international disputes.
Yet another new factor on the world scene―one also initiated by peace activists―is the development of nonviolent resistance. As staunch humanitarians, peace activists had pacifist concerns and human rights concerns that sometimes pulled them in opposite directions―for example, during the worldwide struggle against fascist aggression. But what if it were possible to battle for human rights without employing violence? This became the basis for nonviolent resistance, which was not only utilized in dramatic campaigns led by Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., but in mass movements that, subsequently, have challenged and toppled governments. Indeed, nonviolent resistance has become a new and powerful tool for people to drawn upon in conflicts without slaughtering one another.
In addition, the modern world has produced many other alternatives to mass violence. Why not expand international exchange and peace studies programs in the schools? Why not dispatch teams of psychologists, social workers, conflict resolution specialists, mediators, negotiators, and international law experts to conflict zones to work out settlements among the angry disputants? Why not provide adequate food, meaningful employment, education, and hospitals to poverty-stricken people around the world, thus undermining the desperation and instability that often lead to violence? Wouldn’t the U.S. government be receiving a friendlier reception in many countries today if it had used the trillions of dollars it spent on war preparations and destruction to help build a more equitable, prosperous world?
Of course, this scenario might depend too much on the ability of people to employ reason in world affairs. Perhaps the rulers of nations, learning nothing since the time of Alexander the Great, will continue to mobilize their citizens for war until only small bands of miserable survivors roam a barren, charred, radioactive wasteland.
But it’s also possible that people will finally acquire enough sense to alter their self-destructive behavior.
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May 26th, 2014
By Lawrence S. Wittner.
Is economic inequality growing in American higher education?
A report just issued by the Institute for Policy Studies―The One Percent at State U―indicates that it is. Surveying public universities, the report finds that the 25 highest-paid presidents increased their income by a third between fiscal 2009 and fiscal 2012, bringing their average total compensation to nearly a million dollars each. Also, the number of these chief executives earning over a million dollars in 2012 more than doubled over the previous year. In 2013, the best-paid among them was E. Gordon Gee of Ohio State University, who raked in $6,057,615 from this employment.
The lucrative nature of these positions appears to have had little to do with the intellectual distinction of the universities. For example, in 2013 the second most lavishly-rewarded public university president (paid $1,636,274) headed up Texas A&M University at College Station and the eighth (paid $1,072,121) headed up the University of South Alabama, two institutions that are not usually considered the acme of intellectual achievement. By contrast, the presidents of some of the nation’s most respected public universities―the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of California-Berkeley, UCLA, and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst―received total annual compensation that ranged from $400,664 and $467,699.
Nor is it at all clear that the top income recipients at universities merit their extraordinary compensation. Graham Spanier, the highest-paid public university president in 2012 (Penn State, $2.9 million), was fired from his post for his apparent role in the cover-up of sexual abuse of children by his university’s assistant football coach. E. Gordon Gee, the highest-paid public university president in 2013, resigned his position amid a trustee uproar over his disparaging remarks about Catholics.
Meanwhile, as the incomes of the 25 best-paid public university presidents soared, the livelihoods of their faculty deteriorated. This deterioration resulted largely from the fact that tenured and tenure-track faculty were replaced with adjuncts (part-time instructors, paid by the course) and contingents (temporary faculty). Median pay for adjuncts in the United States is reportedly $2,700 per course, forcing them to cobble together enough courses or jobs to ensure their survival. Many have incomes below the official poverty level and receive food stamps. As for contingents, they face low pay, few if any benefits, and no job security. In recent years―as the income of the 25 best-paid public university presidents grew dramatically―their hiring of adjunct and contingent faculty far outstripped their hiring of regular faculty at their institutions. Consequently, although tenure and tenure-line faculty at these 25 universities outnumbered contingent and part-time faculty prior to the fall of 2009, the situation was reversed by the fall of 2011.
Of course, this change in the working conditions and economic circumstances of college and university faculty is not unusual. In 1969, tenured and tenure-track faculty comprised 78 percent of all instructional staff in higher education. Today that situation has been turned on its head, and the American Association of University Professors estimates that 76 percent of college and university instructors are contingents, adjuncts, and graduate students. Consequently, most college and university teachers are now in an economically marginal status. The plight of the faculty is particularly remarkable at the 25 public universities with the highest-paid presidents, where its growing marginality occurred in the context of soaring incomes for the top administrators.
And the inequality may be even greater at private universities, where a great many more presidents have outlandish incomes. According to the data provided by the Chronicle of Higher Education, there were fourteen times as many private as public university presidents receiving more than a million dollars each in 2011 (the latest year for which statistics seem to be available). Consequently, the enrichment of top administrators, coupled with the shift to adjunct and contingent faculty, means that economic inequality is thriving on private campuses, as well.
Students comprise another university constituency that is faring poorly. The rapidly-rising tuition at public and private institutions has sent student debt climbing to unprecedented levels. In 2012, students owed a staggering $1.2 trillion, an amount that surpassed Americans’ credit card debt. Indeed, it is estimated that, in 2013, 71 percent of college seniors who graduated had student loan debt, with an average of $29,400 per borrower. Meanwhile, university spending on scholarships lagged far behind spending on non-academic administration, such as executive administration, general university administration, legal and fiscal operations, public relations, and development. Between fiscal 2007 and fiscal 2012, the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities reduced spending on scholarships by 55 percent while increasing spending on non-academic administration by 44 percent.
Looked at in the framework of individual campuses, it is a disturbing picture.
From fiscal 2010 to fiscal 2012, Ohio State paid its president a total of $5.9 million. Student debt soared, rising 46 percent from summer 2006 to summer 2011. From fall 2005 to fall 2011, the number of adjunct and contingent faculty increased 62 percent―nearly three times faster than the national average.
In fiscal 2012, Penn State awarded $2.9 million in salary and severance pay to its disgraced president. From fiscal 2006 to fiscal 2012, it provided another $4.8 million in executive compensation, while student debt grew by 49 percent.
From fiscal 2010 to fiscal 2012, the University of Michigan paid its top executive more than $2.6 million. The number of its adjunct and contingent faculty grew by 1,777, or 64 percent, between fall 2005 and fall 2011, and by the summer of 2012 student debt was well above the national average.
Overall, then, higher education seems to be following the general pattern of modern American life―one that favors the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
– See more at: http://hnn.us/article/155740#sthash.STceQFJy.dpuf
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April 16th, 2014
Lawrence Wittner.
Your doctors are worried about your health―in fact, about your very survival.
No, they’re not necessarily your own personal physicians, but, rather, medical doctors around the world, represented by groups like International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). As you might recall, that organization, composed of many thousands of medical professionals from all across the globe, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for exposing the catastrophic effects of nuclear weapons.
Well, what seems to be the problem today?
The problem, as a new IPPNW report indicates, is that the world is showing growing symptoms of a terminal illness. In a nuclear war involving as few as 100 weapons anywhere in the world, the report noted, the global climate and agricultural production would be affected so severely that the lives of more than 2 billion people would be in jeopardy. Even the use of the relatively small nuclear arsenals of India and Pakistan could cause terrible, long lasting damage to the Earth’s ecosystems. The ensuing economic collapse and massive starvation would throw the world into chaos.
And this is just a small portion of the looming nuclear catastrophe.
Today, some 17,300 nuclear weapons remain in the arsenals of nine nations, and their use would not only dramatically exacerbate climate disruption, but would create almost unbelievable horrors caused by their enormous blast, immense firestorms, and radioactive contamination.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), founded by IPPNW in 2007, reports that a single nuclear weapon, detonated over a large city, “could kill millions of people in an instant.” Subsequently, many additional people would die of burns and other injuries, disease, and cancer.
Residents of the United States and Russia, two nations currently engaged in an international brawl, might be particularly interested in the fact that their countries possess over 16,000 nuclear weapons. About 2,000 of them on hair-trigger alert, ready for use within minutes. According to the ICAN report, if only 500 of these weapons were to hit major U.S. and Russian cities, “100 million people would die in the first half an hour, and tens of millions would be fatally injured. Huge swaths of both countries would be blanketed by radioactive fallout.” Furthermore, “most Americans and Russians would die in the following months from radiation sickness and disease epidemics.”
These unnerving reports from IPPNW and ICAN are reinforced by warnings from the World Health Organization (WHO). “Nuclear weapons constitute the greatest immediate threat to the health and welfare of mankind,” that respected international organization has reported. “It is obvious that no health service in any area of the world would be capable of dealing adequately with the hundreds of thousands of people seriously injured by blast, heat, or radiation from even a single one-megaton bomb.” The WHO went on to declare: “To the immediate catastrophe must be added the long-term effects on the environment. Famine and diseases would be widespread, and social and economic systems would be totally disrupted.”
Despite the warnings from the medical profession that, in the words of ICAN, “nuclear weapons are the most destructive, inhumane, and indiscriminate instruments of mass murder ever created,” the nine nuclear powers seem in no hurry to get rid of them―or at least to get rid of their own. The United States has possessed nuclear weapons for almost 69 years; Russia for almost 65. Despite their repeated promises, in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1970 and in later circumstances, to engage in nuclear disarmament, they still possess about 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons. Both countries, in fact, are now engaged in nuclear “modernization” programs, with the Obama administration proposing to upgrade nuclear weapons and build new nuclear submarines, missiles, and bombers at an estimated cost of somewhere between $355 billion and $1 trillion over the next 30 years.
Although the other kinds of weapons of mass destruction are banned by treaty, there are no plans by the nuclear powers to negotiate a treaty banning nuclear weapons. Indeed, given the current U.S.-Russia confrontation, it seems unlikely that there will be progress on much smaller-scale arms control and disarmament agreements.
That’s the bad news from your doctors.
The good news is that you and other people around the world aren’t dead yet and that there’s still time to change the destructive behavior of your national leaders. Actually, some opportunities are opening up along these lines. At a February 2014 conference in Mexico drawing official representatives from 146 nations (but boycotted by the nuclear powers), there was strong support for a treaty banning nuclear weapons, and the Austrian government will host a follow-up conference later this year. Also, an international NPT Preparatory Conference will begin in late April and an international NPT Review Conference will be held the following spring. Meanwhile, two pieces of legislation have been introduced in the U.S. Congress―the SANE Act in the Senate and the Rein-In Act in the House―that would cut the bloated U.S. nuclear weapons budget by $100 billion over the next ten years. So who knows? If you and others take some preventive action, you might even avoid the terminal illness that now awaits you.
Anyway, good luck with it. You deserve a chance to survive. In fact, we all do.
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April 9th, 2014
By Lawrence Wittner.
Is there an emotional connection between the oceans and the pursuit of peace? For whatever reason, peace ships have been increasing in number over the past century.
Probably the first of these maritime vessels was the notorious Ford Peace Ship of 1915, which stirred up more ridicule than peace during World War I.
Almost forty years later, another peace ship appeared ― the Lucky Dragon, a Japanese fishing boat showered with radioactive fallout from an enormous U.S. H-bomb explosion, on March 1, 1954, in the Marshall Islands. By the time the stricken vessel reached its home port in Japan, the 23 crew members were in advanced stages of radiation poisoning. One of them died. This “Lucky Dragon incident” set off a vast wave of popular revulsion at nuclear weapons testing, and mass nuclear disarmament organizations were established in Japan and, later, around the world. Thus, the Lucky Dragon became a peace ship, and today is exhibited as such in Tokyo in a Lucky Dragon Museum, built and maintained by Japanese peace activists.
Later voyages forged an even closer link between ocean-going vessels and peace. In 1971, Canadian activists, departing from Vancouver, sailed a rusting fishing trawler, the Phyllis Cormack, toward the Aleutians in an effort to disrupt plans for a U.S. nuclear weapons explosion on Amchitka Island. Although arrested by the U.S. coast guard before they could reach the test site, the crew members not only mobilized thousands of supporters, but laid the basis for a new organization, Greenpeace. Authorized by Greenpeace, another Canadian, David McTaggart, sailed his yacht, theVega, into the French nuclear testing zone in the Pacific, where the French navy deliberately rammed and crippled this peace ship. In 1973, when McTaggart and theVega returned with a new crew, French sailors, dispatched by their government, stormed aboard and beat them savagely with truncheons.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, peace ships multiplied. At major ports in New Zealand and Australia, peace squadrons of sailboats and other small craft blocked the entry of U.S. nuclear warships into the harbors. Also, Greenpeace used the Rainbow Warrior to spark resistance to nuclear testing throughout the Pacific. Even after 1985, when French secret service agents attached underwater mines to this Greenpeace flagship as it lay in the harbor of Auckland, New Zealand, blowing it up and murdering a Greenpeace photographer in the process, the peace ships kept coming.
Much of this this maritime assault upon nuclear testing and nuclear war was inspired by an American peace ship, the Golden Rule.
The remarkable story of the Golden Rule began with Albert Bigelow, a retired World War II U.S. naval commander. Appalled by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, he became a Quaker and, in 1955, working with the American Friends Service Committee, sought to deliver a petition against nuclear testing to the White House. Rebuffed by government officials, Bigelow and other pacifists organized a small group, Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons, to employ nonviolent resistance in the struggle against the Bomb. After the U.S. government announced plans to set off nuclear bomb blasts near Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands ― an island chain governed by the United States as a “trust territory” for the native people ― Bigelow and other pacifists decided to sail a 30-foot protest vessel, the Golden Rule, into the nuclear testing zone. Explaining their decision, Bigelow declared: “All nuclear explosions are monstrous, evil, unworthy of human beings.”
In January 1958, Bigelow and three other crew members wrote to President Dwight Eisenhower, announcing their plans. As might be expected, the U.S. government was quite displeased, and top officials from the State Department, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the U.S. Navy conferred anxiously on how to cope with the pacifist menace. Eventually, the administration decided to ban entry into the test zone.
Thus, after Bigelow and his crew sailed the Golden Rule from the West Coast to Honolulu, a U.S. federal court issued an injunction barring the continuation of its journey to Eniwetok. Despite the legal ramifications, the pacifists set sail. Arrested on the high seas, they were brought back to Honolulu, tried, convicted, and placed on probation. Then, intrepid as ever, they set out once more for the bomb test zone and were arrested, tried, and — this time ― sentenced to prison terms.
Meanwhile, their dramatic voyage inspired an outpouring of popular protest. Antinuclear demonstrations broke out across the United States. The newly-formed National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy went on the offensive. Moreover, an American anthropologist, Earle Reynolds, along with his wife Barbara and their two children, continued the mission of the Golden Rule on board their sailboat, thePhoenix. In July 1958, they entered the nuclear testing zone. That August, facing a storm of hostile public opinion, President Eisenhower announced that the United States was halting its nuclear tests while preparing to negotiate a test ban with the Soviet Union.
Even as test ban negotiations proceeded fitfully, leading to the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and, ultimately, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1996, the Golden Ruledropped out of sight. Then, in early 2010, the vessel was discovered, wrecked and sunk in northern California’s Humboldt Bay. Contacted by historians about preserving the Golden Rule for posterity, officials at the Smithsonian Museum proved uninterested. But peace activists recognized the vessel’s significance. Within a short time, local chapters of Veterans for Peace established the Golden Rule Project to restore the battered ketch.
Thanks to volunteer labor and financial contributions from these U.S. veterans and other supporters, the ship has been largely rebuilt, and funds are currently being raised for the final stage of the project. Veterans for Peace hope to take the ship back to sea in 2014 on its new mission: “educating future generations on the importance of the ocean environment, the risks of nuclear technology, and the need for world peace.”
As a result, the Golden Rule will sail again, restored to its role as America’s most important peace ship.
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February 25th, 2014
By Lawrence S. Wittner.
Robert Zimmer, president of the University of Chicago and the highest-paid university president in the United States. Image via Flickr.
As the United States begins to grapple with the issue of growing economic inequality, it should not ignore the widening income gap on American college campuses.
Some of the nation’s poorest people work at higher educational institutions, and many of them are members of the faculty. Oh, yes, there are still faculty members who receive comfortable middle class salaries. But most faculty do not. These underpaid educators are adjunct faculty, who now comprise an estimated 74 percent of America’s college teachers. Despite advanced degrees, scholarly research experience, and teaching credentials, they are employed at an average of $2,700 per course. Even when they manage to cobble together enough courses to constitute a full-time teaching load, that usually adds up to roughly $20,000 per year — an income that leaves many of them and their families officially classified as living in poverty. Some apply for and receive food stamps.
Adjunct faculty face other job-related difficulties as well. Lacking employment security of any kind, they can be hired to teach courses the day before classes begin — or, for that matter, not hired at all. They often receive no healthcare or other benefits, have no office space, mailboxes, or email addresses at colleges where they teach, and drive long distances between their jobs on different campuses. As the impoverished migrant labor force of its day, this new faculty majority deserves its own Grapes of Wrath.
By contrast, others on campus are doing quite well. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, forty-two presidents of private colleges and universities were paid more than a million dollars each in 2011 — up from thirty-six the previous year. The highest earners were Robert Zimmer of the University of Chicago ($3.4 million), Joseph Aoun of Northeastern University ($3.1 million), and Dennis Murray of Marist College ($2.7 million). Unlike adjunct faculty, whose income, when adjusted for inflation, has dropped by 49 percentover the past four decades, these campus presidents increased their income substantially. Zimmer’s pay doubled, Aoun’s pay nearly tripled, and Murray’s pay nearly quadrupled from the previous year. The yearly compensation packages for eleven of the forty-two million-dollar-or-more private college presidents nearly doubled.
Furthermore, high-level administrative positions often come with some very substantial perks. At the University of Nebraska, top administrators are given free memberships in country clubs, as well as very expensive cars, like the Porsche driven by the chancellor of its medical center. At New York University, the trustees gave president John Sexton — whose university compensation in 2011 was $1.5 million — a $1 million loan to help him purchase a vacation home on Fire Island. According to a New York Times article, Gordon Gee— the Ohio State University president who received university compensation in 2011-2012 of $1.9 million — was known for “the lavish lifestyle his job supports, including a rent-free mansion with an elevator, a pool and a tennis court and flights on private jets.”
Some have argued, of course, that top campus administrators genuinely deserve these kinds of incomes and lifestyles. But faculty and others are not so sure. At NYU, after the faculty voted no confidence in President Sexton’s leadership, the trustees convinced him to retire at the end of his contract, in 2016. At Penn State, where President Graham Spanier was the highest-paid public university president in the United States in 2011-2012 (at $2.9 million), he was dismissed in connection with the crimes of the former assistant football coach who was convicted in 2012 on forty-five counts of sexual abuse. Spanier is expected to stand trial on charges that he failed to report the crimes and tried to cover up what he knew. On other campuses, top administrators have been convicted of extensive fraud and embezzlement.
But even if one assumes that most campus administrators do a good job, why should there be a widening gap between their incomes and the incomes of those who do the central work of the university: the faculty?
Furthermore, why should there be an ever-growing number of administrators — presidents, vice presidents, associate vice presidents, assistant vice presidents, provosts, associate provosts, deans, associate deans, assistant deans, and a myriad of other campus officials? Between 1993 and 2009, the ranks of campus administrators expanded to 230,000 — a growth of 60 percent, ten times that of the tenured faculty. Not surprisingly, a recent report by the American Institutes for Research, revealed that, in 2012, there remained only 2.5 instructional or nonprofessional support employees for every administrator. As colleges and universities are flooded with administrative officials, is there no longer a role for those who do the teaching and research?
Perhaps the time has come to redress the balance on campus by cutting the outlandish income and number of administrators and providing faculty members with the salaries and respect they deserve.
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February 4th, 2014
By Lawrence S. Wittner.
Lawrence S. Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is a satirical novel about university corporatization, What’s Going On at UAardvark?
Image via Wiki Commons.
It’s heartening to see that an agreement has been reached to ensure that Iran honors its commitment, made when it signed the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to forgo developing nuclear weapons.
But what about the other key part of the NPT, Article VI, which commits nuclear-armed nations to “cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament,” as well as to “a treaty on general and complete disarmament”? Here we find that, 44 years after the NPT went into force, the United States and other nuclear powers continue to pursue their nuclear weapons buildups, with no end in sight.
On January 8, 2014, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced what Reuters termed “ambitious plans to upgrade [U.S.] nuclear weapons systems by modernizing weapons and building new submarines, missiles and bombers to deliver them.” The Pentagon intends to build a dozen new ballistic missile submarines, a new fleet of long-range nuclear bombers, and new intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in late December that implementing the plans would cost $355 billion over the next decade, while an analysis by the independent Center for Nonproliferation Studies reported that this upgrade of U.S. nuclear forces would cost $1 trillion over the next 30 years. If the higher estimate proves correct, the submarines alone would cost over $29 billion each.
Of course, the United States already has a massive nuclear weapons capability — approximately 7,700 nuclear weapons, with more than enough explosive power to destroy the world. Together with Russia, it possesses about 95 percent of the more than 17,000 nuclear weapons that comprise the global nuclear arsenal.
Nor is the United States the only nation with grand nuclear ambitions. Although China currently has only about 250 nuclear weapons, including 75 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), it recently flight-tested a hypersonic nuclear missile delivery vehicle capable of penetrating any existing defense system. The weapon, dubbed the Wu-14 by U.S. officials, was detected flying at ten times the speed of sound during a test flight over China during early January 2014. According to Chinese scientists, their government had put an “enormous investment” into the project, with more than a hundred teams from leading research institutes and universities working on it. Professor Wang Yuhui, a researcher on hypersonic flight control at Nanjing University, stated that “many more tests will be carried out” to solve the remaining technical problems. “It’s just the beginning.” Ni Lexiong, a Shanghai-based naval expert, commented approvingly that “missiles will play a dominant role in warfare, and China has a very clear idea of what is important.”
Other nations are engaged in this arms race, as well. Russia, the other dominant nuclear power, seems determined to keep pace with the United States through modernization of its nuclear forces. The development of new, updated Russian ICBMs is proceeding rapidly, while new nuclear submarines are already being produced. Also, the Russian government has started work on a new strategic bomber, known as the PAK DA, which reportedly will become operational in 2025. Both Russia and India are known to be working on their own versions of a hypersonic nuclear missile carrier. But, thus far, these two nuclear nations lag behind the United States and China in its development. Israel is also proceeding with modernization of its nuclear weapons, and apparently played the key role in scuttling the proposed U.N. conference on a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East in 2012.
This nuclear weapons buildup certainly contradicts the official rhetoric. On April 5, 2009, in his first major foreign policy address, President Barack Obama proclaimed “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” That fall, the UN Security Council — including Russia, China, Britain, France, and the United States, all of them nuclear powers — unanimously passed Resolution 1887, which reiterated the point that the NPT required the “disarmament of countries currently possessing nuclear weapons.” But rhetoric, it seems, is one thing and action quite another.
Thus, although the Iranian government’s willingness to forgo the development of nuclear weapons is cause for encouragement, the failure of the nuclear nations to fulfill their own NPT obligations is appalling. Given these nations’ enhanced preparations for nuclear war — a war that would be nothing short of catastrophic — their evasion of responsibility should be condemned by everyone seeking a safer, saner world.
– See more at: http://hnn.us/article/154488#sthash.FY1QmBF3.dpuf
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