David Cortright is an American scholar and
peace activist
A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals, such as the ending of a particular war (or wars) or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world peac ...
. He is Director of Policy Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the
University of Notre Dame
The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main campu ...
and chair of the Board of the
Fourth Freedom Forum
The Fourth Freedom Forum is a nonpartisan, nonprofit operating foundation that seeks to provide discussion, development, and dissemination of ideas focused on solutions to global security threats. Its primary focus is the use of economic incenti ...
.
Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame Cortright has a long history of public advocacy for disarmament and the prevention of war.
Biography
Cortright is a 1968 graduate of the University of Notre Dame. In 1970 he received his M.A. from New York University, and completed his doctoral studies in 1975 at the Union Institute in residence at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.
As a soldier during the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
, Cortright joined with fellow soldiers to speak out against the war as part of the GI peace movement.
In 1977, Cortright was named the executive director of
The Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy (SANE), which under his direction became the largest disarmament organization in the U.S. Cortright initiated the 1987 merger of SANE and the
Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign
Peace Action is a peace organization whose focus is on preventing the deployment of nuclear weapons in space, thwarting weapons sales to countries with human rights violations, and promoting a new United States foreign policy based on common secu ...
and served for a time as co-director of the merged organization. In 2002 Cortright helped to found the
Win Without War
Win Without War is a public education and advocacy coalition based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 2002 in the runup to the Iraq War, Win Without War remains active as a coalition of national, multi-issue organizations dedicated to advancing progr ...
coalition in opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Starting in 2014, he fought to have the Department of Defense change a "rose-colored portrayal" of the Vietnam War on the government agency's website. Following the
2016 Colombian peace agreement referendum
The Colombian peace agreement referendum was held on 2 October 2016 to ratify the final agreement on the termination of the Colombian conflict between the Colombian government and the FARC guerillas. It failed with 50.2% voting against it and 4 ...
, he worked on the implementation of the 300-page agreement.
Work
Cortright has written widely on nonviolent social change, nuclear disarmament, and the use of multilateral sanctions and incentives as tools of international diplomacy. He has provided research services to several foreign ministries, including those of Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, Germany, Denmark, and The Netherlands, and has advised agencies of the United Nations, the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, the International Peace Academy, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Books
He is the author or co-editor of 19 books:
* ''
Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War'' (
New Village Press
New Village Press is a not-for-profit book publisher founded in 2005 in the San Francisco Bay Area now based in New York, New York. It began as a national publishing project of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), an ...
, 2019)
* ''Ending Obama's War: Responsible Military Withdrawal from Afghanistan'' (Paradigm, 2011)
* ''Towards Nuclear Zero'', with
Raimo Väyrynen (Routledge, 2010)
* ''Gandhi and Beyond: Nonviolence for a New Political Age'' 2nd ed. (Paradigm, 2009)
* ''Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas'' (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
* ''Uniting Against Terror: Cooperative Nonmilitary Responses to the Global Terrorist Threat'' (MIT Press, 2007), co-edited with George A. Lopez.
Over the past fifteen years, he and Lopez have written or co-edited a series of major works on multilateral sanctions, including:
* ''Smart Sanctions: Targeting Economic Statecraft'' (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002)
* ''Sanctions and the Search for Security: Challenges to UN Actions'' (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002)
* ''The Price of Peace: Incentives and International Conflict Prevention'' (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997)
* ''The Sanctions Decade: Assessing UN Strategies in the 1990s'' (
Lynne Rienner Publishers
Lynne Rienner Publishers is an independent scholarly and textbook publishing firm based in Boulder, CO. It was founded in 1984 and remains one of the few independent publishers in the US.
It publishes primarily in the fields of international stu ...
2000). Awarded the Publisher's Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award in 2001.
See also
*
List of peace activists
This list of peace activists includes people who have proactively advocated diplomatic, philosophical, and non-military resolution of major territorial or ideological disputes through nonviolent means and methods. Peace activists usually work ...
References
External links
Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cortright, David
21st-century American male writers
American anti-war activists
American anti–Vietnam War activists
Nonviolence advocates
American anti–nuclear weapons activists
University of Notre Dame people
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
American male non-fiction writers