Howard Zinn
Professor Emeritus of Political Science
Boston University

An insightful social critic and acclaimed historian, he studies forces that have broken down community as well as obstacles confronting any genuine attempt to build or rebuild community.

Dr. Howard Zinn professor, activist, and author has dedicated his life to the notion that the knowledge of history is important to people's everyday lives, and can be a powerful force for social change. Zinn is a champion of the notion that historical change occurs more through mass movements of ordinary people than through the wisdom and insight of so-called Great Men.  His best known book, "A People's History of the United States 1492- Present",  has sold over a half-million copies.  It was one of the first major looks at American history from the perspective of the powerless and disenfranchised, those whose circumstances are usually omitted from history books.

Zinn with a PhD from Columbia and an impressive body of writing behind him, is no armchair historian.  A child of blue-collar parents who had few opportunities for education, he honed his social consciousness through books by Charles Dickens and work as a shipfitter.  Dr. Zinn says in his memoirs that as a bombardier during WWII, he came to a new understanding of the terrible nature of war.

As a professor at Atlanta’s black universities in the 1950s, he joined then students NAACP Chairman Julian Bond and Children’s Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman on the picket lines and in sit-ins and supported their efforts with his writing. He teamed with Noam Chomsky to decry the Vietnam War, and continues to travel and lecture today.

He is the author of many books, one being "You Can't Remain Neutral on a Moving Train" (1994), a powerful memoir in which he relates his life and political activism from his moments as a civil rights chronicler and ally to his antiwar protests and teaching career. Throughout this book, Zinn shows that civil disobedience is necessary to combat society's wrongs.  Professor Zinn argues that it is the social responsibility of the historian to do work that will help solve the conflicts humans face.

The title of Howard Zinn's autobiography "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train", is based on a remark he often made to his students... and it means "the world is already moving  in certain directions -- many of them horrifying. ... To be neutral in such a situation is to collaborate with what is going on."