The soldier revolt, draft and war tax resistance, moratorium marches in Washington – how did mounting G.I. and popular opposition to the war in Vietnam affect military strategy, presidential and congressional debate and decision-making? And how did anti-Vietnam resistance spur lives of activism in the antinuclear and peace movements?

Join us for a conversation with peace activists David Cortright and Bill Ramsey.

Moderated by History professor Tom Jackson.

David Cortright was an active duty G.I. activist who defended his first amendment right to oppose the war in federal court in 1971,  He later became a major leader in the 1980s nuclear freeze movement. Cortright is the author ofSoldiers in Revolt: G.I. Resistance during the Vietnam War (2005) and Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas (2008).  He is the Director of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies where he researches and writes about peace and security; Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan; the abolition of nuclear weapons; counter-terrorism; sanctions; and peace ideas and movements.

Bill Ramsey was a North Carolina student anti-war organizer and coordinator of local anti-Vietnam war tax initiatives.  His experiments in activism have included farmworker boycott organizing, nuclear disarmament campaigns, racial and economic justice projects and movements to oppose U.S. military interventions from Indochina to Afghanistan and Iraq. He worked for the American Friends Service Committee in the Southeast and in St. Louis, where he lived in inner-city neighborhoods for 32 years and founded the Human Rights Action Service. Presently, he coordinates a congregational working group of the Western North Carolina Sanctuary Movement, manages a war-tax resistance alternative fund, and serves on the local steering committee of Just Peace for Israel/Palestine.

Moderated by History Professor Tom Jackson, who was too young to march against the Vietnam War but became active in the nuclear freeze campaign and anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s before becoming a historian of civil and human rights.

” Uncle Sam turned me into a peace activist.” — David Cortright