Joseph Gerson Co-President of the International Peace Bureau, president of the Campaign for Peace Disarmament and Common Security, and was a founding member of the No to War/No to NATO Network.
He works closely with Asian and European peace and nuclear disarmament movements, was co-chair of the working group that produced Common Security in the Indo-Pacific Region Report, and is a frequent keynote speaker at the World Conference against A- & H- Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and other international and U.S. forums.
A Vietnam War era anti-war organizer and draft resister, following the war he served on the staff of the War Resisters’ International in London and Brussels. In Europe, he collaborated with the International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace, including with the PLO representative to Britain and Israeli pacifists within the WRI. In 1976 he joined the staff of the American Friends Service Committee’s New England Regional Office as a Middle East educator/organizer and went on to help to launch the Nuclear Weapons Freeze movement. He was a leading figure in opposition to the United States’ wars with Iraq. In 2017, he launched the organization of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security.
Having worked with Japanese and other A- and H-Bomb survivors for four decades, he was a member of Nihon Hidankyo’s Nobel Peace Prize delegation in December 2024. He helped to launch the nuclear weapons freeze movement of the 1980s, led the successful opposition to construction of naval nuclear weapons bases in Boston, Rhode Island and New York, and was the lead organizer of international conferences and mass mobilizations on the eves of the 2010 and 2015 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Conference. He has organized numerous conferences as well as side events at the United Nations related to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty
Dr. Gerson’s PhD is in Politics & International Security Studies. His books include Empire and the Bomb: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World; With Hiroshima Eyes: Atomic War, Nuclear Extortion and Moral Imagination and The Sun Never Sets…Confronting the Network of Foreign U.S. Military Bases. His articles have appeared in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, The Nation, Peace Review, Common Dreams and many other publications He edited the English language editions of The Day the Sun Rose in the West: Bikini, the Lucky Dragon, and I by Oishi Matashichi and The Atomic Bomb on My Back: A Life Story of Survival and Activism by Taniguchi Sumiteru.
