Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. From the editor's desk We recently happened on the obituary of Oscar Shaftel, scholar of English literature and Oriental studies who in 1953 refused to tell Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Senate Internal Security Committee whether or not he was or had ever been a communist and refused to name his friends and colleagues. Queens College, where he had taught since its founding in 1937, fired him.
Obituaries are sometimes wonderful.
At a news conference, he was asked whether he felt he had regained his honor. It's a daily question, this matter of honor. AFSC, using its bully pulpit as a Nobel Laureate, has chosen this year to nominate for the Nobel Peace Prize two who have spoken and acted to protest our government's sanctions on Iraq. They are joined as witnesses of conscience by a young woman who was supposed to be the star of the UC Berkeley commencement. She turned out to be more star than the authorities probably intended when, after listening to Madeleine Albright, she put aside her carefully prepared speech and spoke from the heart.