David Cortright

David Cortright is an American scholar and peace activist. He is a veteran who is currently Professor Emeritus and special adviser for policy studies at the Keough School of Global Affairs and Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 22 books. 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, Cortright joined with fellow soldiers to speak out against the war as part of the GI peace movement. He was 1 of 1,365 servicemen who signed an antiwar ad in The New York Times published on November 9, 1969 (see image below).

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 and served for a time as co-director of the merged organization. In 2002 Cortright helped to found the Win Without War coalition in opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

In 1992 he was named President of the Fourth Freedom Forum, an operating foundation based in Indiana. Cortright worked in cooperation with George A. Lopez at the Kroc Institute to guide the Forum in sponsoring conferences and publications on strategies for enhancing the effectiveness of multilateral economic sanctions and reducing humanitarian harms.