Emily Greene Balch

From New World Encyclopedia

Emily Greene Balch (January 8, 1867 – January 9, 1961) was an American academic, writer, and pacifist who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 (the prize that year was shared with John Mott), notably for her work with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).


Biography

Balchwas born in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston into an affluent family. Her father was a successful attorney and had also served a United States Senator as Secretary. Balch was amongst the first graduates of Bryn Mawr College in 1889. She continued to study sociology and economics in Europe, spending 1889-90 at University in Berlin and at such Colleges as Harrvard and Chicago in the United States. In 1896, she joined the faculty of Wellesley College, becoming a full professor of economics and sociology in 1913.


Peace Activist

During the First Hague Peace Conference of 1889 and the second conference of 1907, Balch took a keen interest in the proceedings. The Conferences aimed to "seeking the most effective means of ensuring to all peoples the benefits of a real and lasting peace, and, above all, of limiting the progressive development of existing armaments" [1] When World War I broke out, Balch came to the conclusion that she ought to direct her energies towards ridding the world of the scourge of war. In 1915, she took part in the International Congress of Women at the Hague, where she played a major role in forming the Women's International Committee for Permanent Peace, which later becamethe Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, On her return to the US she started to campaig against America's entry into the conflict. With others, she urged for the use of mediation insstead of force. She co-wrote, with Jane Addams and Alice Hamilton, Women at The Hague: The International Congress of Women and Its Results (1915). The League drafted peace proposals for consideration by nations at war. In 1915, she attended Neutral Conference for Continuous Mediation at Stockholm, writing International Colonial Administration in which she set out a scheme for administrating colonies similar to what was later adopted by the the League of Nations.

Her peace activism had so far been facilitated by a grant of leave of absence from Wellesley College. When her request for an extension of this was refused, her contract at the College was terminated. Subsequently, Balch accepted offer of employment on the editorial staff of The Nation. In 1918, Approaches to the Great Settlement, with an introduction by Norman Angell, who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize for 1933. In 1919 she was at Zurich for the Second International Congress of Women where she was invited to serve as secretary of its organizing body, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She occupied this position until 1922. However, in 1934 when the League experienced financial difficulties she international secretary for a year and a half as a volunteer. It was to this League that Miss Balch donated her share of the Nobel Peace Prize money. Between the First and Second World Wars Blach offered her services to governments around the world, and worked in collaboration of the League of Nations which she tried to persuade the USA to join. She worked on such issues as among them, disarmament, the internationalization of aviation and drug control and aid to victims of Nazi oppression. In 1926, she took part in a mission to Haiti, and was the main author of a report, Occupied Haiti. Due to the evils of the Nazi regime, she did not oppose World War II. Instead, she came to realize the fundamental importance of human rights as a basis of respect between peoples and nations, which she linked with the need to increase what she called "internationalism", such as free passage on the seas, in the air and from state to state.

Nobel Peace Prize

In 1946, at the age of 79, Blach was co-recipient with John Raleigh Mott of the Nobel Peace Prize.


Balch converted from Unitarianism and became a Quaker in 1921. She never married.

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  1. Russian note of 30 December 1898/11 January 1899, Final Act Of the International Peace Conference. The Hague, 29 July 1899 Final Act Of the International Peace Conference retrieved 10 July 2007