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Morehouse in his office at the Educational Resources Center in New Delhi, 1966.
A writer, educator, publisher, and activist for human rights and social justice, Ward Morehouse was a prominent critic of corporate power and globalization. Raised in a family of progressive political economists and academics in Wisconsin, Morehouse began his research in international political economy while a student at Yale (BA 1950, MA 1953) and embarked on a standard academic career path. After teaching political science at New York University for a time, he became director of international education at the Center for International and Comparative Studies for the state of New York in 1963, building a particularly strong program in India. However, in 1976, conservative opposition to his political views led Morehouse to leave for a new post as president of the Council on International and Public Affairs (CIPA), a human rights organization he had helped found twenty years before. Throughout, he remained an activist at heart. Galvanized by the 1984 industrial disaster in Bhopal, India, he organized the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, and went on to form or work with many other organizations seeking to resist corporate power and build democracy, including the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD) and the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal, operating the radical Apex Press. Morehouse died in June 2012 at the age of 83.
The Ward Morehouse Papers document the life and work of educator, publisher, and activist Ward Morehouse, as well as the activities of the organizations he founded or actively engaged in. The collection remains in process, with about 60% of it having been arranged and described to the box level. The collection contains a vast quantity of letters, memos, and emails between Morehouse and hundreds of correspondents, which document the daily activities of his work, as well as the evolution of his ideas, his philosophies, and the networks he built with other socially-engaged individuals. Also included are significant accumulations of published and unpublished materials related to the key topics Morehouse was involved in, including international education, economic development in the third world, globalization, grassroots democracy and people’s law, corporate human rights violations, and the Bhopal industrial disaster. Morehouse’s prolific writings, as well as the records of his various publishing enterprises, make up a significant portion of the collection.
Most of the materials and correspondence from 1950 until 1976 are focused on Morehouse's career as an educator. His interests and projects related to international education and scientific and economic progress in South Asia, primarily India and China, form the basis of this part of the collection. Of particular note here are the correspondence and writings that Morehouse produced as a result of a state-sponsored trip to China in 1973, where Morehouse and several colleagues toured educational facilities in China for three weeks as part of a new initiative for better understanding between the United States and China.
In the late 1970s, after Morehouse had left his position as director of the Center for International and Comparative studies for the New York State Education Department, he continued to work primarily out of his nonprofit organizations, the Council on International and Public Affairs, and the Intermediate Technology Development Group. Materials from assorted other nonprofit organizations with which Morehouse was involved began to increase through the 1980s and 1990s. These two decades are the period in which Morehouse left the deepest record of his activities and was involved in the widest range of work. The Bhopal industrial disaster in 1984 catalyzed his interest in the link between law, transnational corporations, and human rights abuses. His correspondence with friends and colleagues, and his shifting efforts to understand the relationship between corporations and democracy, drove his work with the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal and the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy through the 1990s and early 2000s.
In the last period of his work, Morehouse was most involved in grassroots activism, co-founding Shays2 and the Holyoke Community for Open Government with his second wife, Carolyn Toll-Oppenheim, to contest corporate influence and inspire democratic engagement in Western Massachusetts.
The collection is open for research.
Gift of Ward Morehouse, 2010.
Processed by Emma Gronbeck, March 2018; updated by Josh Heropoulos, 2022.
Arrangement: This series is arranged alphabetically.
Contents: Materials related to Morehouse’s personal life and family. Contains documents such as resumes, curriculum vitae, articles written about or featuring Morehouse, notes and interviews, and materials related to family history, particularly Morehouse’s maternal grandfather, Richard T. Ely, a professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin who was put on trial and exonerated in 1894 under accusation of spreading socialist doctrine. In addition to materials on Morehouse's family, some newspaper clippings related to the family of his first wife, Cynthia Thomas, are included along with a booklet for Cynthia’s memorial service. Some materials from Morehouse's educational career are included, such as his degree and yearbook from Yale, as well as some class materials from his single semester studying law at the University of Wisconsin. Later in life, Morehouse had planned to write a memoir, and the notes and outlines for that project are also included in this series.
In addition to his educational and activist career, Morehouse was involved in more personal projects and endeavors. This series contains the records of Morehouse's contracting company, Encon, as well as legal documents and correspondence related to his property on Dyer Island off the coast of Rhode Island.
Arrangement: This series is arranged alphabetically and divided into two subseries.
Contents: This series contains correspondence, related attachments and writings, and publications or articles that inform or describe the organizations or individuals with whom Morehouse corresponded. Over the years, Morehouse built a vast network of friends, colleagues, and fellow activists, and this collection contains letters and emails to and from hundreds of individual persons, organizations, and governments. Correspondence in this series represents only a fraction of what is included in the overall collection, since correspondence related to a particular organization, event, project, or activity was kept together whenever possible.
Major correspondents include: Alvares, Claude; Bachle, Bill; Baxi, Upendra; Bentham, Guy; Bhatkal, Ramdas; Bruno, Kenny; Budhoo, Davison L.; Burton, Neal; Caplan, Ruth; Chatterjee, Pratap; Chopra, Ravi; Chouhan, T. R.; Clark, Leon; Cobb, David; Cohen, Gary; Coleridge, Greg; Collins, Sheila; Coulter, Karen; Cowan, William (Bill); Deenadayalan, E.; Dembo, David; Dias, Clarence; Diwan, Romesh; Dudzic, Mark; Ellis, William (Bill); Fals Borda, Orlando; Ferner, Mike; Goldberg, Gertrude; Gordon, Nancy Morehouse; Grossholtz, Jean; Grossman, Richard; Gupta, Breijen; Henson, Dave; Karliner, Joshua; Kellman, Peter; Kille, Frank R.; Kothari, Smitu; Leonard, Ann; Liisa, Marja; Lopezllera, Luis; Makhijani, Arjun; Margulies, Leah; Mathur, Chandana; McRobie, George; Mehta, Suketu; Menon, A. G.; Morris, Jane Anne; Munyan, Winthrop R.; Nayak, Sharada; Nirash, S. P.; Nyquist, Ewald B.; Palmer, Eric; Parpia, H.A.B "Hossy"; Pereira, Winin; Pitts, Lewis; Price, Jim; Raina, Kamal; Rasmussen, Virginia; Reiner, Kenneth; Richter, Robert "Bob"; Sanders, Bernie; Sarangi, Satinath "Satyu"; Schroyer, Trent; Sharma, Rajan; Shiva, Vandana; Siddhartha, Sigurdson, Jon; Singh, Kavaljit; Sopoci-Belknap, Kaitlin; Speiser, Stuart; Stites, Tom; Sule, Subhash; Surrendra, Lawrence; Tangri, Neil; Tsalis, Tula; Vallianatos, Evan; Weissman, Robert; Zepernick, Mary.
Arrangement: Arranged chronologically.
Contents: This series contains articles, books, reports, sermons, papers, theses, and notes written or co-written by Morehouse, as well as unpublished drafts, related correspondence, review articles, and published pamphlets and journal issues featuring Morehouse’s work. Many of Morehouse’s writings were presented at conferences, products of projects done by one of the nonprofits he was involved in (such as the Council on International and Public Affairs (CIPA) or the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy (POCLAD)), or work done on behalf of a sponsoring body such as the United Nations. As a result, there is overlap between the files in this series, and the files in most other series of the collection, particularly Series 12, Subject Files, and Series 13, Conferences.
The chronology of Morehouse's writings reflects his evolving ideas on various topics, and his changing interests over the decades. His earliest collected writings includes his 1953 Master’s thesis, “Islam and the Socio-Political Development of Modern Egypt,” which focused on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. In 1970, while living abroad in India and serving as a consultant to the Administrative Staff College of India in Hyderabad, Morehouse wrote an article entitled "The White Brahmins" as a critique of the lifestyle of foreign nationals living in India. The publication of this article in
At the same time, between 1967 and 1970, Morehouse was working on a book on science and technology in India entitled
Throughout his life, Morehouse was also an active member of the Unitarian Church. Between the 1950s and 2000s, he wrote and delivered dozens of sermons on various topics, most often related to social and economic justice in American society. Notes and drafts of many of these sermons are contained in this series.
Arrangement: This series is arranged alphabetically and divided into seven subseries.
Contents: This series contains records and publications created by the Council on International and Public Affairs (CIPA), which was founded by Morehouse and served as the primary nonprofit organization through which he operated. CIPA was incorporated in 1954 as the Conference on Asian Affairs, and its purpose was to promote the study of the issues and cultures of Asia and introduce Asian countries to Western democratic principles. For the first few years after its incorporation, it organized a series of public events to increase understanding and awareness of Asian peoples and cultures. In 1957, CIPA’s staff were hired by the recently established Asia Society to initiate and operate its educational programs. Between 1957 and 1969 the Conference on Asian Affairs was mostly dormant, and in 1970 changed its name to the Conference on World Affairs when its members realized that the issues they were concerned with were truly international in scope. The formal purpose then changed to study and discussion of issues on a global scale.
When Morehouse was elected as the new director of CIPA in 1976, the certificate of incorporation was amended a second and final time in order to include a focus on the United States, and the organization was renamed the Council on International and Public Affairs, beginning its truly influential period of activity.
The website for CIPA’s publications remains active and can be accessed at
This subseries contains materials related to the incorporation, administration, finances, and activities of CIPA. Includes files for annual meetings, correspondence, projects, financial reports, organizational planning, certificates of incorporation, by-laws, and other activities unrelated to publishing. Also includes planning materials, correspondence, and publications related to CIPA’s 50th Anniversary celebration in 2004, which it celebrated alongside the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy as it celebrated its 10th Anniversary.
Between 1984 and 1992, Morehouse collaborated with Stuart Speiser, the Center on Expanded Capital Ownership (CECO), and Shareholders in America, Inc. (SIA) to sponsor an essay contest on the Universal Share Ownership Plan (USOP). The goal of the essay contest was to reflect and debate on alternative approaches to achieving a more just economic system in the United States. Speiser was a lawyer and long-time colleague of Morehouse’s, notable for representing Ralph Nader’s suit against General Motors in the late 1960s.
This subseries contains materials related to CIPA’s publishing imprint, The Apex Press (TAP), which was begun in 1987 as New Horizons Press (NHP) and renamed in 1990. The Apex Press published books that provided critical analyses of and new approaches to significant economic, social, and political issues in the United States and other nations. The press also acted as a US distributor for books published by international presses, such as Zed Books in the United Kingdom or The Other India Press in India. It also acted as a distributor for materials produced by other social-engaged organizations, such as the Labor Institute and the Third World Network. Includes annual catalogs, correspondence related to all aspects of the publishing process, drafts of publications, publications, promotional materials and planning documents, financial reports, and other administrative records.
In 1990, Morehouse, together with co-writers David Dembo and Lucinda Wykle wrote and published the book
In 1991 Morehouse, Dembo, and Wykle also wrote and published
After the adoption of the name Apex Press in 1990, Apex acted as distributor to Morehouse’s other publishing imprints, the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) and the Bootstrap Press, and often became the umbrella under which all of Morehouse’s publishing enterprises fell. This is represented in catalogs, financial reports, and planning correspondence. As such, there is some overlap between the subseries in Series 4, CIPA, and with Series 6, ITDG. The Apex Press was sold to Rowman and Littlefield, Inc. in 2010 because the operation was no longer financial sustainable.
This subseries contains materials related to CIPA’s educational and publishing program, the Center for International Training and Education (CITE). CITE had two primary goals: to help internationalize US school and college curriculums through activities and publications, and to provide technical assistance to developing countries through educational programs. CITE was overseen by Morehouse's colleague and CIPA member Leon Clark, who acted as chief editor of its book. CITE’s main series of publications were the Eyes books (
This subseries contains material related to the cooperative publishing program, Learning Resources in International Studies (LRIS), of which CIPA was a member between 1979 and 1986. LRIS published low-cost and user-oriented materials to support the research and educational efforts of faculty, students, and other professional public audiences. Includes annual catalogs, related correspondence, promotional materials, and other administrative records. LRIS was administered by the Foreign Area Materials Center (FAMC) of the New York State Department of Education, and the work that Morehouse did with the program carried over from his time as director of the FAMC.
This subseries contains materials related to CIPA’s joint program with the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, Policy Studies Associates (PSA). PSA’s goal was to improve college and university instruction in policy sciences by collaborating with faculty to develop learning resources for students to better understand policy analysis skills. Includes annual catalogs, related correspondence, drafts of publications, published books, promotional materials, and other administrative records related to the program.
This subseries contains publications and related materials published under CIPA’s name. Includes CIPA’s two regular publications,
Arrangement: This series is arranged alphabetically.
Contents: This series contains material related to the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy (POCLAD), which was formed in 1995 by Morehouse and Richard Grossman as a project of the Council on International and Public Affairs (CIPA) in order to research the history of corporate influence on democracy and use that understanding to encourage democratic change and community engagement. POCLAD evolved from the work that Richard Grossman and Frank Adams began in 1991 to research the history of corporations in society, which resulted in the publication of a pamphlet in 1993 entitled “Taking Care of Business: Citizenship and the Charter of Incorporation.” POCLAD’s activities included a travelling presentation entitled “Rethinking the Corporation,” as well as publishing a number of books through CIPA’s Apex Press, including the POCLAD Anthology,
In 2004, POCLAD celebrated its 10th anniversary alongside CIPA's 50th anniversary, in a joint event which is documented in Series 4, CIPA. Although POCLAD had a close relationship with CIPA, the organization eventually broke off in 2008 to pursue its own goals. POCLAD’s key members and contributors included: Ward Morehouse, Richard Grossman, Bill Bachle, Mike Ferner, Dave Henson, Karen Coulter, Peter Kellman, Jane Anne Morris, Jim Price, Virginia Rasmussen, and Mary Zepernick.
Arrangement: This series is arranged alphabetically and divided into three subseries.
Contents: This series contains materials related to the incorporation, administration, finances, and activities—primarily publishing—of the North American Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG). ITDG North America was inspired by, but not directly affiliated with, ITDG United Kingdom, which was established in 1965 by E.F. Schumacher and George McRobie to focus on economic needs and opportunities in the industrialized world. ITDG North America was founded in 1979 to promote the development of small and intermediate-scale technologies and a more sustainable society in the United States and Canada. ITDG also had significant collaboration with The Other Economic Summit (TOES) of North America, and this series contains some overlap with material from Series 7, TOES.
This subseries contains correspondence, annual meeting files, financial reports, and other records related to the operations and activities of ITDG.
This subseries contains materials related to ITDG’s publishing operations, including correspondence with authors and the British Intermediate Technology Group, drafts of books, promotional materials, and other publishing records. ITDG publications primarily published North American editions of ITDG UK books, and distributed books from other independent publishers and nonprofit organizations.
This subseries contains materials related to ITDG’s imprint, the Bootstrap Press, which was established in 1985. The Bootstrap Press published books for The Other Economic Summit (TOES) as well as books written by the Intermediate Technology Group of North America. The subject focus of the Bootstrap Press was on social economics, community economic change, and appropriate technology in the industrialized and third worlds. Includes related correspondence, publication drafts, promotional materials, and other publishing records.
Arrangement: This series is arranged alphabetically.
Description: This series contains materials related to The Other Economic Summit of North America (TOES/NA), an international forum for the presentation, discussion, and advocacy of the economic ideas that support a more just and sustainable society. TOES/NA was inspired by The Other Economic Summit of the United Kingdom, whose first gathering coincided with the 1984 London Economic Summit. In anticipation of the 1988 and 1990 Economic Summits to be held in Canada and the United States, TOES/NA was created as an offshoot to organize for those gatherings. Morehouse was elected as the first Chair of TOES/NA, which went on to hold annual summits for the next fourteen years. The most well-documented of TOES annual meetings is the 1990 summit in Houston, Texas. TOES published a series of books written and edited by its members through the Bootstrap Press of the Intermediate Technology Development Group, so some of the materials from this series overlap with Series 6, ITDG. Includes correspondence, TOES publications and newsletters, summit planning and promotional materials, notes, summit papers and presentations, and other administrative documents.
Key members of TOES included Ward Morehouse, Trent Schroyer, Tula Tsalis, Susan Hunt, Mariclaire Acosta, William W. Howard, Sandra Sorensen, John MacLean, Robert J. King, Ronald Blackwell, Robert Denman, Antonio Gonzalez, Joan Dye Gussow, Melvin King, Gerald, Lefebvre, Karen Lehman, Luis Lopezllera Mendez, Bertha Elena Lujan, Stephen Marglin, Ifengenia Martinez, Ignacio Peon Escalante, and Sonia Stairs.
Arrangement: This series is arranged alphabetically.
Contents: This series contains materials related to the 1984 Union Carbide Corporation industrial accident in the Bhopal region of India, and the efforts of various individuals and organizations to address the human rights violations surrounding the incident and the continued plight of the survivors over the following decades. Contains correspondence, publications, and records related to the Bhopal Action Resource Center (BARC), the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB), the Union Carbide Company (UCC), Dow Chemical Company, and Morehouse’s decades of research, writing, and activism related to the incident.
Arrangement: This series is arranged alphabetically.
Contents: This series contains records related to the tribunals held by the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal, a nonprofit organization focused on researching and bringing attention to large-scale international crimes and human rights violations committed by governments and corporations. Morehouse was an organizer and jury member between 1990 and 2000, with one of the primary foci of his work with the tribunal being the 1984 Union Carbide chemical spill in Bhopal, India. Materials in this series include correspondence, planning documents for the tribunal, financial planning and reports, research and notes, articles and writings, reports of the tribunal’s hearings and judgements, and tribunal publications.
The major tribunal sessions with which Morehouse was involved, and which make up the largest portion of this series, were the 1992 session in India and the 1998 and 2000 sessions held at Warwick University in the United Kingdom. Upendra Baxi, a professor at Warwick University was another tribunal organizer who Morehouse worked closely with and whose writings and correspondence are featured prominently in this series.
Arrangement: This series is arranged alphabetically and divided into four subseries.
Contents: This series contains materials created or accumulated by Morehouse in his capacity as a professor at various higher education organizations, as well as his tenure as director of the Center for International and Comparative Studies at the University of the State of New York. This includes correspondence and memos, notes, departmental reports and publications, administrative records, financial records, and curriculum materials.
This subseries contains correspondence, notes, and writings from 1970, when Morehouse worked as a consultant to the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad, as well as drafts of course materials for a class in management for research that Morehouse contributed to in 1973. Morehouse’s controversial article “The White Brahmins,” which he published during his time at the college, is included in Series 3, Writings, and features additional correspondence with the college faculty.
This subseries contains materials from Morehouse’s tenure as director of the Center for International and Comparative Studies (CICS) and the Office of Foreign Area Studies for the University of the State of New York (USNY), the branch of the New York State Department of Education that sets educational standards for kindergarten through graduate school. This series contains publications and correspondence from Morehouse’s time as a consultant in foreign area studies to the New York State Education Department in 1962, as well as memos, reports, writings, bibliographies, project files, and other administrative records related to Morehouse’s role as director of CICS from 1963 to 1976. This subseries also contains material related to the creation, operations, and publications of the Educational Resources Center (ERC) in New Delhi, India, whose function was to produce and publish materials that would enrich American understanding of India. Morehouse founded the ERC in 1966 and served as its first director.
Of particular note in this subseries are materials related to the state-sponsored trip to China undertaken in 1973 by Morehouse and several other members of the department, during which Morehouse visited educational, industrial, and cultural facilities across China as part of a cultural exchange program. Morehouse led the group, which spent 3 weeks visiting the major cities of Peking, Shanghai, and Canton, as well as farming villages and a smaller city. This series includes correspondence and planning documents for the trip, notes taken while abroad, materials collected in China (such as maps and pamphlets of cultural centers, and a drawing done by an elementary school child in Shanghai), as well as writings and preparatory materials for several talks given following the trip.
Morehouse was also involved in a conflict over the federal budget proposals to defund the International Education Act, Special foreign currency program (Public Law 480) and the Department of State Education and Cultural Exchange Program for the 1969-1970 fiscal year, which is documented in this series. Morehouse resigned as director of CICS in October of 1976, largely as a result of a feeling of urgency that he should move on to other projects, a choice he described in a letter to the New York State Commissioner of Education, and Morehouse’s long-time mentor and friend, Ewald “Joe” Nyquist.
This subseries contains material related to Morehouse’s year as a visiting researcher at the Research Policy Program (RPP) of the University of Lund in Sweden from 1977 to 1978. The director of the RPP, Jon Sigurdson, was a long-time colleague of Morehouse's with whom he collaborated and corresponded. The series includes correspondence, writings, and publications of the Research Policy Program, particularly those done in preparation for the 1979 United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development. Morehouse and his wife, Cynthia Thomas, edited publications for the RPP. Morehouse collaborated with Sigurdson and other RPP faculty, Stevan Dedijer on many projects over the years.
This subseries contains correspondence, registration cards, curriculum planning, and class material related to Morehouse's years teaching political science at New York University.
Arrangement: This series is arranged alphabetically and divided into 11 subseries.
Contents: Materials related to Morehouse’s involvement in a variety of nonprofit, religious, and union organizations both independent of and associated with his core organizational involvements. Contains a significant amount of correspondence and project planning materials.
This series contains publications, correspondence, and administrative records related to Morehouse’s role as Educational Director of the Asia Society in New York City between 1957 and 1962. The Asia Society’s mission was to research and promote the study of Asian cultures in American undergraduate education.
Morehouse was a board member for the Global Information Network (GIN), which was founded in 1983 to distribute information on international current events to media outlets of minority communities in the United States, particularly on topics not covered by the mainstream press. Lisa Vives was the executive director of GIN and one of the primary contributors of this subseries. Includes correspondence and memos, information on organizational initiatives, and meeting reports.
This subseries contains materials related to the International Group for Grass Roots Initiatives (IGGRI), a coalition of members of various organizations around the globe which came together to discuss the issues of globalization and innovate better ways for individual and grassroots efforts to effect change. IGGRI grew out of the 1985 Helsinki Consultation, which was organized by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in collaboration with the Grassroots Initiatives and Strategies (GRIS) Program of the Society for International Development (SID). One of IGGRI’S major initiatives that is documented in this series was its September 1998 meeting on expanding peoples’ spaces in the globalizing economy held at the Hanasaari Culture Center in Espoo, Finland. One result of this gathering was a document outlining the issues of globalization and proposing ways to fight against it, entitled “The Hanasaari Statement,” which many members of the gathering, including Morehouse, signed on to.
Key members of IGGRI included Morehouse, Judithe Bizot, Ruth Caplan, Karen Coulter, Cheri Honkala, Smitu Kothari, Luis Lopezllera, Siddhartha, and Marja-Liisa Swantz.
Morehouse was a founder of the New Jersey Democracy and Corporate Accountability Project (NJ DCAP), which sought to research and change the relationship between corporations and democracy in the state of New Jersey. The NJ DCAP collaborated with the National Lawyers Guild in 1999 to propose a revised version of the New Jersey Corporate Code. Includes correspondence, notes, and background materials such as articles and other publications.
This subseries contains materials related to the New Initiative for Full Employment (NIFE), a national network of economists, scientists, and labor and community activists that sought to address the issue of unemployment in the United States through public policy research, education, and political mobilization. NIFE cooperated with other likeminded employment-focused nonprofit organizations, in particularly the Economists Working Group (EWG). In 1995, the National Jobs for All Coalition (NJFAC) was incorporated by a group of NIFE members to realize its goals of reducing unemployment through more active political engagement. Includes correspondence, memos, meeting minutes, project planning, publication drafts, drafts of NIFE’s keystone work “Jobs For All in a Nation That Works,” and event planning and promotional materials. Key members of NIFE included Sheila Collins, David Dembo, Trudy Goldberg, Sumner Rosen, and Ward Morehouse.
Morehouse was a member of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) and a founder of the Corporations Committee of the NLG. From 1998 to 1999, the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy (POCLAD) collaborated with the National Lawyers Guild to propose revisions to the New Jersey Corporate Code that would strip rights of personhood from corporations. Major contributors to this subseries include Thomas Linzey, Ann Fagan Ginger, and Eric Palmer. As Morehouse’s focus on the legal aspects of his work with corporations and human rights increased, his involvement with the NLG began to intersect with his work in other organizations, particularly through the 1990s and 2000s.
Morehouse was a long-time member of AFL-CIO Local 8-149, the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union (OCAW). OCAW merged with the United Paperworkers International Union in 1999 and became the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Workers International Union (PACE). In addition to membership, Morehouse collaborated with the union to publish union materials, supply the union with published materials, and collaborate on shared issues related to workers’ rights and employment, such as the Bhopal industrial disaster. Includes correspondence with OCAW representatives such as president, Mark Dudzic, and OCAW Secretary-Treasurer, Anthony Mazzocchi, as well as membership contracts between the Council on International and Public Affairs (CIPA) and OCAW, meeting minutes, event information, union governance records, and promotional materials and union publications. Also included is correspondence and work done with the Labor Institute and Labor Party.
The Poetry Institute was incorporated in 1955 in order to prepare and publish the poetry magazine, Poetry London-New York (PLNY) as well as carry out other literary and educational activities. Morehouse helped to establish the organization and served as secretary and member of the board of directors from 1955 to 1959. This subseries contains legal documents related to the incorporation of the Poetry Institute, meeting minutes, correspondence, notes, and publication drafts.
Shays2 was a grassroots organization co-founded by Morehouse with Carolyn Toll Oppenheim, Anita Constantini, and Dan McLeod in 2002 in order to build relationships between grassroots organizations in the Pioneer Valley, promote self-governance, and work to repeal corporate personhood and combat corporate abuses. Shays2 operated on many of the same philosophies as the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy, with a more local focus. Shays2 helped to organize the Holyoke Citizens for Open Government (HCOG) in 2003, whose first issue was to democratize the city’s process of examining privatization of its waste-water treatment plant. This subseries includes promotional materials, notes, correspondence, planning documents, newspaper issues and clippings, legal documents and reports related to the operations and activities of Shays2 and HCOG.
This subseries contains materials related to Morehouse’s involvement with the Unitarian Church and various associated organizations, including the Unitarian Universalists Assembly (UUA), Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (UUF), Unitarian Universalists for a Just Economic Community (UUJEC), and the Unitarian Church of Croton-on-Hudson, NJ, his local church for many years.
Arrangement: This series is arranged alphabetically.
Contents: Files containing materials related to projects that Morehouse was involved in both independently and as part of one of his nonprofit or academic affiliations. Files also contain articles, clippings, and correspondence on topics of interest related to Morehouse’s work in various areas, and correspondence related to trips abroad. Many of Morehouse’s projects resulted in one or more written final reports, articles, or books, and so this series often overlaps with Series 3, Writings.
Significant projects in this series include Morehouse’s cooperative work with the American Council on Education (ACE) as director of the Foreign Area Materials Center (FAMC) of the New York State Education Department from 1973 to 1975. As part of the Task Force on Diffusion of International Studies, Morehouse helped to research integration of international studies in US education and produce an atlas of organizations focused on international education. He was also involved in a project to assemble educational resources in Bengali Studies for the department in 1973.
Morehouse’s work for the United Nations included work for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Associated Schools in 1974, a study on micro-electronics for the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC) in 1979, a compilation of corporate profiles for the UNCTC in 1981, a study in biotechnology for the UNCTC in 1983, and a study and report on biotechnology and vaccines in the third world for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in 1986.
Major topics on which Morehouse accumulated background materials include education in China and India, Formosa Plastics, DuPont, Enron, Dow Chemical, Union Carbide, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, privatization of the United Nations and the United Nations Global Compact in 2000-2001, the World Trade Organization, and the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). Morehouse’s research in the 1950s and 1960s focused on international education and technology, while a focus on corporations, corporate crimes, and corporate agendas in international economics occupied the 1990s and the 2000s.
Arrangement: This series is arranged alphabetically.
Contents: Materials related to gatherings and events such as conferences, conventions, forums, symposiums, and workshops which Morehouse planned, presented at, or attended. Includes correspondence, registration materials, conference materials and publications, reports and presentation articles, and event schedules. This subseries also contains files for protests which Morehouse organized or attended, several of which resulted in his arrest. The most significant of these was the protest of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999 at the WTO Ministerial Conference on November 30th. Over 40,000 demonstrators assembled to protest the meeting, making it the largest gathering of protestors in the US against a world meeting associated with economic globalization thus far. Morehouse, along with fellow activist Cheri Honkala, were arrested and tried for crossing a police line and attempting to serve citizen arrest warrants on the G7 trade ministers, although these charges were eventually dropped. Includes planning documents and correspondence for the organization of the protests, related writings and articles, and legal documents related to arrests and court appearances.
Arrangement: This series is arranged alphabetically.
Contents: Photographic materials featuring Morehouse and his family, events related to his work and activism, and serving as illustrations for books published by one of his imprints. Includes photographs from Bhopal in 2003 and 2 copies of a photo album from 1966 depicting the staff and facilities at the Educational Resource Center in New Delhi, India.
Arrangement: This series is arranged alphabetically.
Contents: Audio material on cassette tapes, including assorted and undated dictations recorded by Morehouse, as well as recordings of interviews and events. Video material includes several VHS tapes.
Arrangement: This series is arranged alphabetically.
Contents: Objects and artifacts accumulated by Morehouse, including several awards, a card catalog of correspondents, and a Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy (POCLAD) license plate.