The Many Voices of Peace Studies: Celebrating 50 Years

Bill Wickersham

Bill Wickersham – former adjunct professor of Peace Studies, and long-time anti-war activist – is recognized as a leader of the peace movement at Mizzou. In fact, in 2004, he was named the MU Peace Studies Professor of the Year.

Wickersham, through the essay on his life, titled “Reflections of a University of Missouri Peace Activist,” said he peacefully fought for nuclear disbarment, and opposed the Vietnam War. He also participated in the MU-sponsored anti-poverty research project, which promoted housing in one of the poorer areas of St. Louis. He was heavily involved in the Missouri Peace Study Institute in Columbia, and in fact was founding director.

The Early Years

Wickersham was raised in St. Joseph, MO, where his parents, who worked in the restaurant business, provided Wickersham, their only child, with access to sports and vocal music. A shelf in his computer room is filled with trophies from that time period.

“My parents were Christian fundamentalists,” the 87-year-old recalls. “But they didn’t force that on me, per se. We went to a Disciples of Christ church – a moderate Christian faith, no hell and damnation, and stuff like that. So, the people who influenced me from about 11 years on were the liberal Christian ministers. But in terms of activism? No,” Wickersham says.

He says still, he had a passion for supporting causes.

“I felt blacks, particularly, should have a good chance (to succeed).”  

He supported African Americans playing in sports leagues together, and in fact, he remembers his baseball team to be the first in the state of Missouri to integrate players.

“So that sort of thing,” he recalls. “But nothing like marches or petitions.”

The Start of a Movement

Activism became his passion around 1962, while in his late 20s.

“I was program director of the Student Union at the university at that time,” he says. “And we had a classic film service. A young speech instructor, Bill Mackie, who was a pacifist whose father was a right-wing Democrat, came into my office to talk about films. But as he left, he asked, “Bill, what are the conditions under which you would kill several million people in a day’s time?’

“I asked ‘what are you talking about?’ And he asked, ‘Are you not aware of the new missiles that are being put in Missouri? They’re putting in 150 Minuteman missiles that will kill millions of Russians in just a few minutes, about 30.’ And I said, “I have never heard of that.’”

Mackie then invited Wickersham to Quaker pacifist’s John Schuder’s house to hear Dr. Kurt Hohenesmer, a German engineer who was discussing the project, with the thesis being that these missile deployments could lead to an arms race that would threaten life on Earth, Wickersham says.

“It blew me away,” he adds. “The ah ha moment essentially was at John Schuder’s house. I had never thought about that. I’d been in the Army, served as an enlisted man, but I had never really thought strategically or thought in those terms. So, it was just a whole new deal. It was like somebody hit you in the head with an axe.”

The missile project was destroyed in time, and the silos sit empty now.

“You can go over to Higginsville about a mile from the high school and there’s one probably a hundred yards off the road,” Wickersham adds.

Passion Affects Work Life

His passion led to additional conflicts with his job at the university around 1965 when he was about 31 years of age – his first real clash between work and activism.

“I was a full professor of Extension Education. And the Extension engineers were working, cooperating with, the National Federal Extension Service and the Pentagon, and they actually put a little handout out, about four pages, which effectively said how to have fun in a fallout shelter during WWIII. It didn’t say exactly that, but that’s what it amounted to. Games you could play when you went to a fall-out shelter. And I challenged it. And the folks at the university didn’t like it at all.”

In 1969, Wickersham was involved in a student-run Free University, which met off-campus and had no ties to Mizzou. They met weekly and presented courses, including “The Possibility of Peace” by Wickersham.

“They met in an attempt to insert curriculum into the University of Missouri,” he recalls. “Peace Studies, world order, feminists – those sorts of topics that were not being dealt with in the regular curriculum.

A New Beginning

“Early in 1969, MU Sociology Professor Donald Granberg and I were approached by MU Honors College Director Bill Bondeson to develop a new ‘Peace and World Order’ course to be taught to undergraduate students in the spring of 1970,” Wickersham wrote.

The course was widely popular on campus, and 50 students attended the class, which used a reader titled “The Possibilities of Peace,” written by Elizabeth Jay Hollins. About 150 applied for the course. Wickersham refused payment for the course so it would not be influence or directly tied to the university so he could speak freely.

Taking on Kent State

Wickersham also took the lead from David Wurfel (1929-2012), who was the assistant professor of political science and an expert on Southeast Asia. Wurfel was professing that attacks on Vietnam were illegal – that you can’t attack someone under international law unless they attack you.

“So, I eventually became a leader during the Kent State situation. I was front and center when it came to the Kent State Protest.

“I’m not a total pacifist. I’m a rule of law person,” says Wickersham. “There’s no way you can have a civilized world without some kind of backup to law. And that backup unfortunately is violence, but it’s never been really carefully thought out. I think you shouldn’t use war illegally. If we hadn’t used it illegally, we wouldn’t have had a war since World War II.

“If another country has not attacked you, or there’s no imminent threat of them attacking you, then it’s illegal. We just don’t pay attention. But there is a law of the land, this supremacy clause in the U.S. constitution in article VI that says that all treaties are the supreme law of the land… and do not allow you to attack other (nations).”

Wickersham was in Washington DC where he also did a lot of activist work, when Kent State shootings resulted in four deaths and nine injuries of unarmed university students by the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970, in protest of the Vietnam War.

“I came back Thursday, and on Friday morning there was a big protest on Rollins Field,” he recalls.

Wickersham says his “Peace and World Order” students, the first Peace Studies class on campus, were peacefully protesting at the chancellor’s office unbeknownst to him. Wickersham came as quickly as he could and was voluntarily arrested along with some of his students.

“I think there were a little more than 30 of us who were put on a school bus,” he recalls. “They took us down to the police station. My old fraternity brother Frank Conley was there. Frank sat the police officers down, I think, and said, “this is not going to be violent.’ There was an African-American detective who asked us what we were doing, and I said, ‘What Dr. King taught us to do.’”

Arrests and Job Loss

Wickersham says he was arrested two or three times over the course of his years of being an activist for the peace movement, but was always let go with a hand slap. He also lost his job at the university as a result of his activism, but eventually got hired back on campus.

Wickersham says while his protests were peaceful, and used to get publicity for his cause, at first the “peaceful” part did not come naturally.

“During the course of my life, I had been involved in several serious fist-fights and as we used to say, ‘didn’t take crap from anyone,” he wrote in “Reflections.”

“So, when a group of U.S. Marine reservists taunted us on one of our early demonstrations, my tendency was to ‘kick ass and take names.’ Fortunately, my fellow demonstrators … were highly disciplined peace activists who were completely devoted to non-violent direct action. With their guidance and training, I slowly learned to overcome the violent urges in a way that was compatible to genuine peace education.”

The Origins of the Peace Studies Program

Soon after Wickersham taught his first course in Peace Studies, with much turmoil and conflict, the Peace Studies program was founded in 1971 with John Galliher appointed director. Wickersham, hired by Galliher about 20 years ago, became an adjunct professor in Peace Studies. He taught for about 10 years. He was also president of Friends of Peace Studies in its early years.

Galliher, who died in 2019, was director of Peace Studies for 16 years, as well as professor emeritus of Sociology.

“I think my contribution to the Peace Studies program … I was a forerunner to it,” Wickersham says. “I’m proud of that.”

He says his proudest moment, however, is when he received the Gandhi-King-Ikeda Award from the Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia – named after peace leaders Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Daisaku Ikeda.

Would he recommend activism to others?

“There are those who think it is important to stand up to the law and say, ‘I stand for international law. I do not want my country to murder people illegally and I’m willing to be arrested,’” Wickersham says. “But some people aren’t willing to do that. That’s ok. There are many many roles in the peace effort. Find the one that fits for you. And then what usually happens – you just keep getting pushed more and more into other activities as I did.”