Glenn D. Paige - Biography

Biography

The son of a YMCA social worker, Glenn Durland Paige was born on June 28, 1929 in Brockton, Massachusetts, in the northeastern part of the United States known as New England. He grew up in Rochester, New Hampshire, with summers in Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He served in the U.S. Army (1948–52) as recruit, private, corporal, sergeant, second lieutenant (OCS), first lieutenant and later captain (Army Reserve, 1956–60). A Korean War veteran (1950–52), he served as communications officer at the 10th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Group, attached to the 1st Republic of Korea Infantry Division, September–December 1950.

He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy (1947), Princeton University (A.B., Politics, 1955; International Politics; Chinese and Russian languages), Harvard University (A.M., East Asian regional studies, 1957; Korean Studies, Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages) and Northwestern University (PhD political science, 1959; interdisciplinary behavioral science curriculum). After teaching at Seoul National University's Graduate School of Public Administration (1959–61), and Princeton University (1961–67), he taught at the University of Hawai‘i (1967–92). There he introduced new courses and seminars on political leadership (1967–92) and nonviolent political alternatives (1978–92), besides lecturing introduction to political science and world politics. He helped to found the University of Hawai‘i Center for Korean Studies in 1972, the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace and its Center for Global Nonviolence Planning Project (later to become the Center for Global Nonkilling).

The journey from soldier to scholar to founder with others of the Center for Global Nonkilling can be told in terms of three discoveries.

The first began with a case study with interviews of how President Harry S Truman and other leaders engaged the United States in the Korean War in which Paige had served during 1950–52. This became a doctoral dissertation published as a book entitled The Korean Decision: June 24–30, 1950 (see also Study of the Korean War Decision-Making)

Subsequent comparative study of divided Korea’s divergent development since 1945 led to discovery of the creative potential of political leadership for social change and a call to make this a special field for research, teaching, and service in the academic discipline of political science. This was published in The Scientific Study of Political Leadership (New York: The Free Press, 1977). This "discovery" of the importance of creative political leadership for global problem-solving contributed to thinking that led to creation of the United Nations University/International Leadership Academy at the University of Jordan in 1995 through the pioneering efforts of Prime Minister Dr. Abdelsalam al-Majali under the leadership of King Hussein who announced its establishment in New York during the UN's 50th Anniversary ceremonies. Glenn D. Paige served as participant-observer and evaluator of the First UNU/ILA Leadership Programme in Jordan, Israel, Palestine, and Egypt in 1997.

The second discovery was of nonkilling as a basic value for political science and life. Glenn D. Paige's awakening to nonkilling occurred during 1973–74 and has led to more than a quarter century of discovery and re-education resulting in the thesis of Nonkilling Global Political Science. This unexpected shift by a conventionally trained, violence-accepting political scientist, whose doctoral dissertation justified war and threat of war in Korea, perhaps can be attributed in part to a process of "cognitive dissonance" in which one's values and perceptions of reality come in conflict. Having participated in and justified a Cold War crusade for freedom and peace in Korea (values) combined with opposition in 1973 by the United States and ROK governments to a University of Hawai‘i initiative to invite North Korean scholars to visit Honolulu for a peaceful cultural exchange (non-peace reality) one day produced a strongly felt value shift expressed in three words of an inner voice, "No more killing!" (see photograph above). Consequently this value shift led both to heightened perceptions of lethal realities and to search for realistic nonkilling alternatives.

As a result, he produced a critical book review by him of his book on the Korean War, which essentially had been a scientific apologia for war. This was published as “On Values and Science: The Korean Decision Reconsidered” in American Political Science Review Such an author review was unprecedented in the history of the APSR since 1906.

The third discovery followed projection of the logic of nonviolent critical analysis applied to his own scientific work to critique the violence-accepting assumptions of the discipline of political science as a whole. After 28 years of research, teaching, and travel to discover foundations for a new nonkilling discipline the results were published as Nonkilling Global Political Science By 2009 the book was being translated into 34 languages and had led to convening the First Global Nonkilling Leadership Forum in Honolulu, Hawai‘i, November 1–4, 2007.