On April 24, 2014, a daylong symposium was held at New York University (NYU) to celebrate the donation of Zinn’s personal papers to NYU’s Tamiment Library by his children, Myla Kabat-Zinn and Jeff Zinn. Included in the donation are Zinn’s personal correspondences, school and military records, FBI files, datebooks, biographical articles, and interviews.
Panels held throughout the day highlighted different aspects of Zinn’s life and work: Zinn at Tamiment, Zinn as Historian, Zinn as Activist, and Teaching Zinn.
The panels included the following participants:
Zinn at Tamiment
- Jan Hilley, Civil Liberties/Academic Freedom Project Archivist, NYU
- Kristin Maria Catrone, NYU-Steinhardt ’14
- Rustin Finkler, NYU-Steinhardt ’14
- Commentator: Frances Fox Piven, professor of political science and sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY)
- Moderator: Robert Cohen, professor of history and social studies in NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.
Zinn as Historian
- Wesley Hogan, director of the Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University and author of Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC’s Dream for a New America (2009).
- Michael Kazin, professor of history, Georgetown University. He is co-editor of Dissent and author of American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation (2011).
- Robyn Spencer, assistant professor of history, Lehman College of CUNY. Her academic interests include: civil rights and Black Power; African American women; post-1945 social movements; urban history; and gender.
- Moderator: Timothy Naftali, director of the Frederic Ewen Academic Freedom Center and Head, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at NYU.
Zinn as Activist
- Martin Duberman, professor emeritus of history at Herbert Lehman College and the CUNY Graduate Center, where he founded the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies. Historian, playwright and gay-rights activist, he has written more than twenty books.
- Irene Gendzier, professor of political science, Boston University. Her books include: Notes From the Minefield: United States Intervention in Lebanon and the Middle East, 1945-1958 (1998); Development Against Democracy (1995); and Frantz Fanon: A Critical Study Pantheon (1985).
- Alice Walker, author and activist whose critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple (1982) won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
- Moderator: Marilyn Young, professor of history, NYU. Author of numerous articles and several books including: The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990, (1991); Transforming Russia and China: Revolutionary Struggle in the 20th Century (with William Rosenberg), (1980); and Rhetoric of Empire: American China Policy, 1895-1901 (1969).
Teaching Zinn
- Introduction by Alice Walker
- Julian Hipkins III, U.S. history teacher at Capital City Public Charter School, Washington, DC and National History Day board member. Hipkins has won numerous awards for his teaching, including District of Columbia History Teacher of the Year Award for 2012.
- Katy Swalwell, assistant professor in University of Maryland’s College of Education, contributor to Rethinking Schools, and author of Educating Activist Allies: Social justice education with the suburban and urban elite (2013).
- Deborah Menkart, executive director of Teaching for Change, co-director of the Zinn Education Project, and co-editor of a number of publications including Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching (2004).
- Moderator: Carl Mirra, associate professor in education, Adelphi University. With research interests in peace education; civil rights and education reform; ideology of U.S. foreign policy; and historiography/movements of the 1960s, Mirra has written several books, including The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945-1970 (2010) with a foreword by Howard Zinn.
Read more about this dedication and see pictures at the Zinn Education Project.
