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"MAKING THE CASE FOR ABOLISHING NUCLEAR WEAPONS"
AN OPEN PUBLIC TALK
BY
JONATHAN SCHELL
AUTHOR OF THE GIFT OF TIME AND THE FATE OF THE EARTH
COLUMNIST FOR THE NATION
THE FIRST ANNUAL RON RIDENHOUR MEMORIAL LECTURE
April 8, 1999
Tulane University
7:30 PM
Jonathan Schell will deliver the first annual Ron Ridenhour Memorial
Lecture at Tulane University on April 8, 1999 at 7:30 pm.
The Ron Ridenhour Memorial Lecture commemorates the lifework of Ron
Ridenhour who died last year suddenly at age 52. Ridenhour touched
history when he brought to light the My Lai Massacre, the most infamous
atrocity of the Vietnam War. He spent a lifetime as an investigative
journalist in New Orleans and elsewhere dedicated to uncovering
government malfeasance. He was the recipient of the Polk Award, the most
distinguished award in the field of investigative journalism.
At the time of his death the Pulitzer Prize winning author David
Halberstam wrote:
I have a small pantheon of heroes, mostly people like John Lewis and Bill
Minor, the great Mississippi journalist. Ron Ridenhour was one of them,
too.
We met late in our lives at a conference on My Lai in New Orleans.
Meeting him, I thought of Bobby Kennedy's favorite quote from Emerson:
"If one good man plants himself upon his convictions, the whole world will
come round."
So I quoted it -- and turned to him and said, "You are that one good
man."
He was an American original, absolutely authentic man in an age that is
increasingly inauthentic. His story encompassed the worst and finally the
best of America. Because he was so wonderfully artless, his telling of
it was uniquely powerful -- it was like hearing the purest voice of the
American conscience. . . .
I am terribly saddened by his death - this raw, unfinished majestic man.
There is nothing I cherish and value more than the nobility of ordinary
people, and he was a sterling example of it.
Jonathan Schell is a distinguished journalist and author whose early work
in Vietnam all but predicted the My Lai massacre. His The Military Half
described the destruction of 70% of the hard targets in Quang Ngai
province by the end of 1967. My Lai, situated in Quang Ngai, was the
site only 3 months later (March 16, 168) of the cold-blooded murder by
American Army troops of 504 Vietnamese women, children and old men.
Ridenhour's prevention of the My Lai cover-up by the Army made My Lai
frontpage news in America for over two years as Lieutenant Calley of
Charlie Company, Americal Division, was tried by a military court
martial. Found guilty of killing over "30 oriental human beings" (as the
charge read), Calley served only 3 weeks in prison. Richard Nixon
commuted his sentence.
Jonathan Schell has had a distinguished career in journalism. His book
The Fate of the Earth helped inspire the Nuclear Freeze movement in the
early 1980s. The New York Times Book Review called it "A work of
enormous force" and added: "It accomplishes what no other work has
managed to do in the years of the nuclear age. It compels us to confront
head-on the nuclear peril in which we all find ourselves." Harrison E.
Salisbury of the New York Times called it: "The most important book of
the decade, perhaps of the century." And Studs Terkel of the Chicago
Tribune said this: "This is more than a book: it's a bell in the night.
There have been books that have changed our lives. This one may save our
lives--provided it is read now and its warning heeded."
Schell was the Nation's weekly commentator on the Clinton impeachment.
His recent The Gift of Time urges the abolition of nuclear weapons now
that the Cold War is over. This will be the subject of his talk on April
8. Where the The Fate of the Earth urged a freeze on the nuclear buildup
that President Reagan had begun, the new book argues for the abolition of
nuclear weapons entirely. Its most surprising feature is that this
argument is urged in the book not only by Schell himself but by high
officials including Vietnam-era Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara and
the last commander of the Strategic Air Command, General George Lee
Butler.
The talk on April 8 will be held in the Kendall-Cram room on the second
floor of Tulane's University Center on McAlister Drive at 7:00PM.
Admission is free and open to the public. Donations in honor of Ron
Ridenhour to the Ron Ridenhour Memorial Annual Lecture Fund will be
accepted at the door.
Tapes of Ron Ridenhour's last talk at Tulane will be available for
purchase as will the Oral History Panel from the 1994 Tulane conference
on the 25th anniversary of My Lai, and Facing My Lai: Moving Beyond the
Massacre, the conference proceedings published by University of Kansas
Press in 1998. The Oral History Panel tape includes not only Ridenhour's
but also Hugh Thompson's report on My Lai. Thompson was the helicopter
pilot who tried to prevent the My Lai massacre as it happened. He was
awarded the Soldier's Medal by the United States Medal for his heroism in
confronting US troops just last year, 30 years after the massacre. Mr.
Thompson who lives in Lafayette LA has promised to attend the event.
Schell will also speak on April 6th in Professor Randy Fertel's
Literature of Vietnam class at 6-8:30 PM in Jones Hall 204. This class
is also open to the public. He will talk about his experience in Quang
Ngai province in 1967 and his experience of writing The Military Half and
The Village of Ben Suc. Both were published first in the New Yorker and
then as books. For further information call Randy Fertel at 862-0707 or
email: rfertel@aol.com
Schell has been a columnist for The Nation, Newsday and writer and editor
for the New Yorker. He has been awarded many prizes including a
Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Foundation Grant, and was a
recipient of the Award for Literature from the American Academy and
Institute of Arts and Letters. His other books include Writing in Time: A
Political Chronicle; The Real War; Observing the Nixon Years; History in
Sherman Park; and The Abolition. He teaches as an adjunct professor of
journalism at Wesleyan University and The New School.
The First Annual Ron Ridenhour Memorial Lecture has been jointly funded
by Tulane University Lyceum, the Political Science Department of UNO, the
English Department of Loyola University, The Institute for Southern
Studies, The Department of History (Tulane), University College (Tulane),
The Betty Wisdom Foundation, and the Parker Institute.
For further information call Randy Fertel at 862-0707 or email:
rfertel@aol.com
Randy Fertel
Tulane University
419 Walnut St.
New Orleans LA 70118
rfertel@aol.com
504-862-0707 (voice)
504-862-0040 (fax)