Biographical Sketch of Joseph Gerson


 

[Includes lists of books, recent articles, important speaking
engagements, major campaigns and events organized,
honors received, and research-related travel]


 

Taken from: http://www.afsc.org/ht/d/ContentDetails/i/4517
    

(I have placed it here because the AFSC website is under reconstruction)

 

 

   

Joseph Gerson addresses Indian
Anti-War Assembly, Hyderbad,
Dec. 18, 2004.
(Photo courtesy of Akahata.)
 


Dr. Joseph Gerson has served the American Friends Service committee since 1976 and is currently Director of Programs and Director of the Peace and Economic Security Program for the AFSC in New England. His program work focuses on challenging and overcoming U.S. global hegemony: its preparations for and threats to initiate nuclear war, and its military domination of the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.

 

He has been involved in the U.S. justice and peace movements since the mid-1960s, when he became active on the margins of the Civil Rights Movement. As a Vietnam-era draft resister, he was Director of Arizonans for Peace and Field Representative for Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam. Following the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, he joined the staff of the War Resisters' International in London and Brussels, where he was privileged to work with extraordinary people who had resisted World War I, Nazi rule and occupations, leading figures from across the Middle East working for resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian and other regional conflicts, and with people who later launched the European nuclear disarmament movement of the 1980s. While in Europe, he served on the board of the International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace.

 

His work with AFSC has included helping to launch the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s, preventing New England harbors from being transformed into nuclear weapons bases, helping to build the U.S. and global anti-bases and nuclear weapons abolition movements, and helping to create peace and anti-war coalitions in the Boston area, across New England, and to a lesser extent nationally and internationally.

 

His recent work has focused on education, organizing and mobilization to end the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq, preventing nuclear war and advancing the struggle for nuclear weapons abolition, the establishing of the global "No Bases Network", and peaceful resolution of the U.S.-DPRK and U.S.-Iran nuclear confrontations. His book Empire and the Bomb: How the United States Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World will be published by Pluto Books and the University of Michigan Press in April, 2007.

 

Building on three decades of collaboration with Asian and European peace movement, since Sept. 11, 2001, he has played a unique role in linking these movements to resist the Bush Administration's global military crusade and its efforts to impose "the arrangement for the 21st century." In addition to working with Asian and European peace and justice movements, he participated in the launch conferences of the Asia Peace Assembly, the European Network for Peace and Human Rights, and the No Bases Network, and he remains actively deeply engaged with each. He has also played the lead role in organizing three New England Wide post-9-11 peace and justice organizing conferences.

 

Over the past year has given keynote talks at the World Conference against A- and H- Bombs in Hiroshima, at the No Bases Conference in Quito, Ecuador, and the Mouvement de la Paix conference in Istres, France. In the same period, he has published articles analyzing the U.S. Congressional election, U.S. nuclear weapons and war policies, alternatives to the U.S. war in Iraq and threats against Iran, U.S. efforts to create permanent military bases in Iraq, and the global infrastructure of U.S. military bases. He is currently working with AFSC, Peace Action and the N.H. Council of Churches to influence the content of the 2008 residential election - especially on U.S. nuclear weapons and war policies.

 

In 2004, he was a leading organizer of the Boston Social Forum and, in conjunction with the European Network for Peace and Human Rights, organized an international peace conference - "A World Working Together For Peace" - within the Boston Social Forum. He was also involved in organizing or supporting peace demonstrations during the Democratic and Republican national conventions. He helped to build popular pressure on the U.S. and other nuclear powers during the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference approaches in Spring. 2005..

 

In association with Focus on Global South, he has worked to help launch the "No U.S. Bases" network, a network that includes more than 100 organizations in more than 40 countries, and he has worked closely with anti-bases activists and scholars in the United States and globally.

 

His previous books include The Sun Never Sets…Confronting the Network of Foreign U.S. Military Bases and With Hiroshima Eyes: Atomic War, Nuclear Extortion, and Moral Imagination. They reflect more than twenty-five years of collaboration with leading anti-bases and disarmament organizers and analysts in many countries, with Asian and European peace movements, and nuclear weapons victims/resisters from Japan and many other countries. His work with A & H Bomb survivors, including Korean A-bomb survivors, has included organizing many speaking tours in the U.S., and co-organizing "Global Hibakusha" and delegations to the Vancouver World Peace Forum, the Hague Peace Appeal, and the United National NGO Millennium conference.

 

Joseph Gerson has spoken at numerous international conferences, lectured at more than 70 U.S. colleges and universities, and spoken to and worked with countless community-based peace and justice organizations. He is a Vietnam era draft resister who received his under graduate degree from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in 1968 and his PhD in Politics and International Security Studies from the Union Institute and College in 1995.

 

Address:

 

Joseph Gerson, Ph.D.
American Friends Service Committee
2161 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02140 USA
Phone: (w) 617-661-6130 (h) 617-876-3392; Cell: 617-216-0576; Fax: 617-354-2832
e-mail: Jgerson@afsc.org


Education:
 

·         B.S.F.S. Georgetown University, 1968

·         Ph.D. in Politics and International Security Studies, Union Institute, 1995

 

Employment:

 

Books:

 

Recent Articles:

 

Public Speaking

 

Major Organizing Campaigns & Events:

 

Honors:

 

Research-Related Travel:

 

 

 

 

Back to October 18 Conference

 

 

 

 

Home