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 2025 Peace History Society Lifetime Achievement Award: Melvin Small, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, History Department, Wayne State University.
The Peace History Society established its Lifetime Achievement Award to recognize those members who have contributed outstanding scholarship and exemplary service to the PHS and to the field of peace history.
Dr. Small’s involvement with the Peace History Society began with its origins as the Council for Peace Research in History (CPRH) in 1964 and spans decades, culminating in a term as CPRH president from 1990-1992. He also served on the CPRH Council and on the Board of Editors for Peace & Change.
Earning his degrees at Dartmouth and the University of Michigan, Dr. Small established his professional home at Wayne State, where he taught from 1965 until his retirement in 2010. A truly international scholar, his career has included Visiting Professorships in Denmark and Canada as well as lectures in Italy, Norway, and Sweden
His own antiwar activism during the Vietnam era helped inform his professional life. He has a lengthy and impressive record of scholarship that has had a huge impact in shaping our understanding of antiwar activism and its effect on American politics and society during the Vietnam War era. These works include: Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves (1988); Antiwarriors: The Vietnam War and the Struggle for America’s Hearts and Minds (2002); Covering Dissent: The Media and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement (1994); and At the Water’s Edge: American Politics and the Vietnam War (2005). He also co-edited Give Peace a Chance: Exploring the Vietnam Antiwar Movement (1992), based on papers presented at the Charles DeBenedetti Memorial Conference, co-sponsored by the CPRH at the University of Toledo in 1990, which he helped organize as program chair. Other notable works include The Presidency of Richard Nixon (1999), Democracy and Diplomacy: The Impact of Domestic Politics on U.S. Foreign Policy, 1789-1994 (1996), and The Wages of War: 1816-1965 (1972). Over a nearly fifty- year span, he produced an extensive list of articles that have appeared in journals such as Peace and Change, Diplomatic History, the Journal of Peace Research, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution, while several valuable essays appear in notable edited collections.
Dr. Small served the historical profession through frequent appearances as a session chair, commentator, or panelist at a wide range of conferences. He was very active as a book reviewer, as a manuscript referee for some of the leading journals and book publishers in our field and was a frequent interview subject by television and print media. He mentored nearly forty graduate students at Wayne State University and as a colleague generously served as a sounding board for peace scholars at all stages of their careers.
The current vitality of the Peace History Society was made possible by the contributions of pioneers such as Melvin Small, and so it is with gratitude that we extend our appreciation by recognizing him with the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award.
 
Prize Committee: Michael Clinton (Chair), Mitchell Hall (pictured), Robbie Lieberman
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