TRANSCEND Member Dr David Krieger Passes Away
OBITUARIES, 18 Dec 2023
Bill Bhaneja - TRANSCEND Media Service
Krieger was co-Founder and President Emeritus of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
Dr. David Krieger (27 Mar 1942 – 7 Dec 2023) was a nuclear disarmament advocate and a peace champion. He was a visionary. Not only a man of impeccable intellect, but also with the soul of an artist. He was a peace builder and lead co-founder of Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF) established in 1982. The pioneering Nuclear weapons abolition monthly NAPF newsletter took one by surprise for its path-breaking non-partisan content put together by a group of scholar-activists. They stood up to criticize nuclear powers, mainly American polity for its double speak and inaction on nuclear weapons ban, their testing and proliferation.
The annual NAPF distinguished peace leadership honorees award established in 1984, its recipients took the award as a badge of honor for recognition of their courageous nonviolent peace work. A list of recipients include independent thinkers and activists from all walks of life: Naom Chomsky, Setsuko Thurlow, Helen Caldicott, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Yehudi Menuhin, Jonathan Schell, Jody Williams, Carl Sagan, Daniel Ellseberg, Paul Ehrlich, Rev. James Lawson… around 40 such honorees since 1984 received the eminent leadership distinction. (Professor Glenn D. Paige, founder of the Center for Global Nonkilling was one of the recipients of the award in 2010.)
- Glenn Paige: A Prophet of Nonkilling – Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
- Distinguished Peace Leadership Honorees – Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
David Krieger’s deeply felt books of poetry emanated from his nonkilling convictions and compassion. His poems for the Letter from USA were not a lament or vent but their No More Killing sentiments were cri de coeur seeking ways to respond to the human tragedy produced by chauvinistic militarism, human apathy and consumerism. His poems wanted us to know– whether a just and peaceful world without nuclear weapons is possible? As he wrote: “The shadow of the bomb still darkens the forests of our dreams.” The titles of his poetry collections speak for themselves:
- Banning the Bomb: In the Shadow of the Bomb – Poems of Survival
- Portraits: Peacemakers, Warmongers, and People Between
- At the Crossroads of War and Peace
- Wake Up!: God’s Tears – Reflections on Atomic Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- The Doves Flew High
- Today Is No Good Day for War
The NAPF website (wagingpeace.org) shows under David Krieger’s leadership numerous awareness campaigns that raised critical issues stopping nuclear disarmament in and outside USA.
In 2019 after four decades Dr. Krieger stepped down as the President of NAPF passing on the ‘waging peace’ baton to Dr. Ivana N. Hughes.
RIP Professor Dr. David Krieger
Message from NAPF and David Krieger’s family announcing his passing
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David Krieger, Ph.D. was Founder and President Emeritus of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. Amongst several of his wide-spanning leadership endeavors in global peacebuilding, he was a founder and a member of the Global Council of Abolition 2000, councilor on the World Future Council, and the chair of the Executive Committee of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility. He had a BA in Psychology and an MA and Ph.D. degrees in Political Science from the University of Hawaii as well as a J.D. from the Santa Barbara College of Law; he served for 20 years as a judge pro tem for the Santa Barbara Municipal and Superior Courts. Dr. Krieger was the author of many books and studies of peace in the Nuclear Age. He has written or edited more than 20 books and hundreds of articles and book chapters. He was a recipient of several awards and honors, including the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology Peace Writing Award for Poetry (2010). He had a new collection of poems entitled Wake Up. For more, visit the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation website: www.wagingpeace.org.
Dr. Bill (Balwant) Bhaneja is a former Canadian science diplomat, a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, and author of six books and scholarly papers on politics and science. He holds a PhD in science policy from UK’s Victoria University of Manchester, currently serves as Senior Advisor to the Center for Global Nonkilling in Honolulu-Hawai’i of which he is a founding member, and produces the Nonkilling Arts Research Committee (NKARC) Newsletter. A peace activist, his recent books include: Troubled Pilgrimage: Passage to Pakistan (TSAR/Mawenzi, Toronto, 2013); Quest for Gandhi: A Nonkilling Journey (Center for Global Nonkilling, Hawaii, 2009); and in collaboration with Vijay Tendulkar, Two Plays: The Cyclist and His Fifth Woman (Oxford University Press (India), New-Delhi, 2006). He lives in Ottawa, Canada. Email: billbhaneja@rogers.com
Tags: ICAN-International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Nonkilling, Nuclear Weapons, Obituary, TRANSCEND Network
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 18 Dec 2023.
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