1 acquittal to rebut the House vote that impeached Donald Trump. Although patterns of racial injustice continued as they PHS News always had, #Black Lives Matter had August 2020 reached its peak as a Twitter hashtag in July 2016. You could use one hand to count the Newsletter of the Peace History number of Covid cases diagnosed in the Society www.peacehistorysociety.org United States, and many students whom I met in an actual classroom on my university campus had no idea what “Covid-19” meant. Over the past several months, however, the officers and board members of the Peace History Society have consulted about what to do in response to the radically altered circumstances that have arisen just since March. Most recently, Kathleen Kennedy, Wendy Chmielewski, and Toshihiro Higuchi served on an ad hoc committee that worked with other PHS officers and board members to produce a statement in support of the President’s Column varied expressions of protest against the long, deep, unresolved issues of racial injustice occurring not only here in the United States but in solidarity around the world. You can read the statement published in this issue of the PHS Newsletter or on the PHS website. Presented to the PHS membership for a vote in July, it passed with 31 Yes votes, 0 No, and 2 abstentions. The statement reaffirms the Peace History Society's commitment to racial justice in our scholarship, classrooms, institutions, and communities and provides a first step in a Michael Clinton sustained process that requires the active participation of the PHS membership. We Only six months removed, it’s difficult to are now considering how to act in specific recall what the world felt like when the ways on the statement's commitment “to previous issue of the PHS Newsletter analyze the actions and methods of appeared in January. The political, social, movements in the past and present that have and health crises that we currently face, contributed to positive social change by while discernible in the distance or working to undo racism, and emphasize this simmering beneath us, had not yet burst into work in our research and writing....” As PHS the urgent conflagrations that now demand members, you are all encouraged to contact immediate attention and action. The crisis me directly with proposals about how the of American political leadership was PHS might use its resources to act on this approaching its desultory climax in a Senate 2 commitment as we move forward. My officer positions available for election later thanks go to Kathleen, Wendy, and Toshi, this year. Once a nominating committee has especially, to all those who contributed to formed, members will receive an invitation and offered comments about the statement, to submit their own names or the names of as well as to those who voted. someone else to stand for one of these The statement provides opportunities positions, including my own. for sharpening the focus of the next Peace Although this is my last President’s History Society conference, scheduled to take Column, it will not be the last place at Kennesaw State University in October communication that you receive from me as 2021, even as the Covid-19 pandemic poses PHS president, with critical issues yet to the challenge of how the conference will take address and, if not resolve, at least to move place. Several conferences that I had planned towards some resolution. Still, it is a suitable to attend this year were cancelled, decisions opportunity to extend my thanks to the PHS made in response to conditions that have not membership for affording me the privilege ebbed— here in the United States, at least— of serving this two-year term as president and are likely to get worse before they get and to all those who’ve provided (and better. We don’t know yet whether or how continue to provide) guidance and support in much they will get better by October 2021, many ways throughout my term. and so this autumn the PHS board will explore how to organize next year’s conference. Peace, --Mike Clinton Abrupt and extreme circumstances have forced us to rethink what we do and Peace History Society Officers how we do it, but it’s worth reflecting how so much of what the PHS has done and how and Board Members, 2020 has changed since its founding in 1964, albeit more often more gradually. President: Michael Clinton Fortunately, there always seem to be Gwynedd Mercy University members like Ginger Williams willing to Vice-President: David Hostetter complete the tasks that sustain the PHS, Los Angeles, CA making it the collegial home that so many of Treasurer: Christy Snider us find it to be. I single Ginger out because Berry College this issue marks her first as editor of the Secretary: Gail M. Presbey PHS Newsletter. In previous years, Ginger University of Detroit Mercy has served as PHS president, its treasurer, Board Members: host of two of PHS conferences (2005 and Elizabeth Agnew 2009), and probably some other roles that I Ball State University don’t know or am forgetting. As the ground Scott Bennett shifts, as times change, the PHS manages to Georgian Court University shift and change as needed because a corps Kevin Callahan of old(er) members and a crop of new ones University of St. Joseph, CT are willing to do new things and to do old Toshihiro Higuchi things in new ways. Georgetown University Please give serious consideration, Chuck Howlett then, to nominating yourself for one of the six Molloy College, emeritus positions on the PHS board or one of the Kathleen Kennedy Missouri State University 3 Erika Kuhlman Idaho State University Interview With Freedom School Head Marian Mollin Staunton Lynd 9 Virginia Tech --Alice and Staunton Lynd Shelley Rose Cleveland State University Book Review 13 Doug Rossinow --Jerry Lembcke Metropolitan State University R. L. Updegrove Teaching Peace History 15 Duluth East H.S., MN --Steve Brady Andy Wilson University of Nebraska-Lincoln Larry Gara Obituary 20 Ex-officio members: -- Wilmington College Past President: Deborah Buffton University of Wisconsin-Lacrosse Editor, Peace & Change: Heather Fryer Peace History Society Statement Creighton University Swarthmore College Peace Collection: in Support of Black Lives Matter Wendy Chmielewski and the Work to Undo Racial Swarthmore College Injustice and Oppression Web Editor: Marc Becker Truman State University As historians and scholars who study the U.N. Representative: Blanche Weisen dynamics of peace and justice, we recognize Cook, John Jay College & CUNY Graduate that state-sponsored and extrajudicial Center violence has had a disproportionate impact on communities of color. We stand in Newsletter Editor: Ginger Williams, solidarity with Black Lives Matter and all Winthrop University [email protected] those currently protesting racist violence in the US and internationally. As scholars, we Newsletter Associate Editor: Tiffany remain dedicated to analyzing interlocking Owens, Winthrop University systems of violence and seeking solutions [email protected] that can build enduring peace with justice. We are committed to promoting anti-racist scholarship, teaching and activism as well as TABLE OF CONTENTS fostering inclusive and open discussions about racial privilege and violence in our President’s Column 1 organizations and institutions. We remain --Michael Clinton committed to positive actions that dismantle institutionalized oppression against people PHS Officers and Board Members 3 of color and other marginalized groups. Since the May 25 killing of George Floyd Black Lives Matter Statement 5 and others in Black communities, we have --PHS Board joined our neighbors, our colleagues, and our students to march, protest and demand News about Bertha von Suttner 7 an end to structural racism, lynching, and --Peter van den Dungen police brutality. We abhor the words and 4 deeds of those in the U.S. government who In Our Institutions have responded to this popular cry for We will work to make our colleges, justice with violence. Federal, state, and universities, and associations diverse and local governments have deployed the inclusive. military, spied on nonviolent demonstrators, In Our Communities and dispersed orderly assemblies with We will share our understanding of the excessive force. Many of these same processes of positive social change so that authorities have ignored white supremacist we can learn and teach about building vigilantes who threaten demonstrators connections with the diverse array of exercising their constitutional rights. groups and individuals working to address The alarming trends in police violence and systemic racism, oppression, and violence. militarization, along with extralegal violence, --Submitted by Michael Clinton, are not limited to the United States. From President Hong Kong to Santiago, Moscow to New Delhi, we have witnessed government authorities, police, and militant groups Suttneriana: News about Bertha brutally suppressing peaceful protesters. The erosion and violation of human rights von Suttner anywhere in the world should be the concern of all. The Peace History Society strongly Anyone familiar with the biography of Bertha condemns violence, whether by governments von Suttner knows that Harmannsdorf (near or paramilitary organizations, and stands in Eggenburg, Lower Austria), is where she solidarity with those seeking liberty, lived and worked for almost two decades in equality, and justice through nonviolent the castle that belonged to the family of her husband. It was mainly from here that she means. As peace historians, we renew our conducted a large correspondence with the commitment and will redouble our efforts to likes of Alfred Nobel and Leo Tolstoi, among explore, analyze and articulate the many others. The castle was in a somewhat conditions for positive, just peace. We will dilapidated state when Dr. Erich Glawischnig, strive to contribute to the process of undoing a professor of veterinary medicine at the racism in the following ways: University of Vienna, became the new proprietor in 1976.