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 Peace History Society Lifetime Achievement Award, 2021
Charles F. Howlett, Molloy College, Emeritus
The Peace History Society is very pleased to present Charles F. Howlett with a Lifetime Achievement Award for 2021. The award recognizes "outstanding scholarship and exemplary service to the Peace History Society" and criteria include "longevity and consistency of commitment" in promoting PHS goals through educational initiatives and significant participation in the PHS. Over many decades, Chuck's work has embodied these standards.
Chuck is Professor of Education Emeritus of Molloy College where in 2018 he received the Distinguished Faculty Award from the Alumni Association in recognition of his significant scholarship. He had earlier taught high school social studies for many years in Amityville, New York. Chuck earned his doctorate from the State University of New York at Albany, where his studies were interrupted by being drafted into the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War – an experience which perhaps fortified his fervent devotion to struggles for peace, past and present. Chuck wrote his dissertation under the direction of Arthur Ekirch, Jr., who was himself among the founders of the Committee for Peace Research in History, the precursor of the Peace History Society.
Chuck’s exceptional publication record stretches from the 1970s to the present and he currently has several more projects in the works. Over the decades he has published a passel of books, articles, documentary collections, introductions, and book reviews covering a range of topics related to Peace Education, Peace Research, Peace History, and Peace Activism. He has studied numerous individuals involved in peace efforts including John Dewey, Mary Stone McDowell, Elihu Burritt, Jane Addams, Nicholas Murray Butler, Lucia True Ames, and John Nevin Sayre, as well as important but anonymous American antiwar activists from colonial times to the Vietnam War. In addition to his focus on individuals, Chuck has also explored the development of International Law, major peace conferences such as the Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration, teaching peace within US schools, and how Peace History itself came to be a recognized academic discipline.
Chuck has often worked with others, serving as an enthusiastic mentor and colleague to students and scholars at various stages of their careers. For example, in 2009, he collaborated with Harriet and Miguel Alonso to produce a special issue of Peace & Change, entitled "Teaching about Peace and Justice from an Historical Perspective". And currently he is working with others to co-edit the Handbook of Peace History (forthcoming from Oxford University Press). Those who have worked with him will attest to his amazing ability to perfectly balance the roles of supportive coach, enthusiastic cheerleader and strict task master to ensure that a quality product results in a timely manner.
He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of many books, including John Dewey: America’s Peace-Minded Educator (2016); The American Peace and Justice Movement from the Early Twentieth Century to the Present (2016); Antiwar Dissent and Peace Activism in World War 1 America: A Documentary Reader (2014); Books, Not Bombs: Teaching Peace since the Dawn of the Republic (2010); A History of the American Peace Movement from Colonial Times to the Present (2008); Brookwood Labor College and the Struggle for Peace and Social Justice in America (1993); and The American Peace Movement: References and Resources (1991). His 2005 edited collection, History of the American Peace Movement, 1890-2000: The Emergence of a New Scholarly Discipline, was cited as an “Outstanding Academic title” by the American Library Association.
Chuck has published dozens of articles in diverse journals, including The History Teacher, Reviews in American History, the Journal of American History, Peace Research, the OAH Magazine of History, the American Historical Review, and the History of Education Quarterly, among many others. In Peace & Change alone, Chuck’s numerous articles include two on education, war, and peace over forty years apart: “A Dissenting Voice: John Dewey Against Militarism in Education,” from April 1976, and “’Undemocratic, Barbaric, and Scholastically Wholly Unwise’: Conscientious Educations Under Fire from the Great War Through the Present,” co-authored with his wife, Patricia Howlett, in April 2019.
In addition, Chuck has been an integral member of PHS since the 1970s, participating in the work of the Society as a Board member and on the DeBenedetti and Scott Bills Prize Committees, and regularly attending and presenting at conferences. Some of this work has been decidedly unglamorous, such as his diligent, line-by-line revisions (with Scott Bennett) of PHS’s long out-of-date by-laws, which Chuck tackled with his characteristic vigor and good humor. Other activities have placed him more in the spotlight, such as his plenary address at the Society’s 2009 conference at Winthrop University on bubble gum cards from the 1930s depicting the horrors of war. Chuck has also worked hard to get the PHS represented in other publications and conferences. To give just two examples, again spanning several decades, he co-authored the 1985 American Historical Association pamphlet, "The American Peace Movement: History and Historiography," and he initiated and guest edited a special section of the Journal of American History in 2019 on "Peace History: Curricular Challenges and Innovative Opportunities." In all these ways, and many more, Chuck certainly has given a "lifetime" of service to both the PHS and the cause of peace history.
In so many ways, Charles F. Howlett has been a model scholar/advocate for Peace History and the Peace History Society. We are so proud to present this award to him.
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