Carl Gershman

Early life and education

Gershman was born into a Jewish family in New York City on July 20, 1943. In 1961, he graduated magna cum laude from the Horace Mann Preparatory School in the Riverdale section of The Bronx. As an undergraduate at Yale University, he was active in the Yale Civil Rights Council, and volunteered in Mississippi and Alabama.

In 1965, he graduated magna cum laude from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts degree and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.

Career

From 1965 to 1967, Gershman served with Volunteers in Service to America in Pittsburgh, which was a domestic version of the Peace Corps."President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society ... included a domestic equivalent of the Peace Corps called Volunteers in Service to America, or VISTA." : In 1968 he graduated with a Master of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

In 1968, he worked in the research department of B'nai B'rith. From 1969 to 1971, he was Research Director at the A. Philip Randolph Institute, where he was an assistant to its director, Bayard Rustin.

From 1969 to 1974, Gershman served as director of research, co-chairman, and executive director of the Youth Committee for Peace in the Middle East, where he also edited the organization's magazine Crossroads. In 1972, he served on the governing council of the American Jewish Committee.

In 1972, Gershman and Irving Howe edited a collection, Israel, the Arabs and the Middle East. Gershman also served on the editorial board of Dissent magazine, which was edited by Howe.

Social Democrats USA

In a 2006 interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Gershman said, "I have to confess that, in my early youth, I was a kind of a social democrat of sorts; I'm now really a democrat; I'm non-partisan." From 1970–1974, Carl Gershman was a national leader of the Young People Socialist League (YPSL), the youth section of the Socialist Party of America; he served as Vice Chairman, Co-Chairman, and then Chairman of YPSL.

As YPSL's vice chairman in December 1972, he authored a 13-page, singly spaced, international-affairs document which called for the Castro regime in Cuba to stop funding guerrilla movements and to begin "loosening the bonds" of repression; the document was approved and an alternative document calling for the U.S. government to recognize Cuba's government was defeated. YPSL criticized the "new politics" led by George McGovern, which had lost 49 of 50 states to Richard Nixon in the 1972 election.

At the Socialist Party USA convention in December 1972, Gershman introduced the international program, which was approved by a two to one vote; the losing alternative, proposed by Michael Harrington, called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam, while the majority resolution called for a negotiated peace settlement. At the convention, the Socialist Party changed its name to Social Democrats USA (SDUSA) by a vote of 73 to 34. Alt URL Harrington resigned from SDUSA and founded the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) in 1973. In 1975, Gershman published a monograph on the foreign policy of the American labor movement.

From 1975 to January 1980, Gershman served as executive director of SDUSA. In 1980, he debated Michael Harrington on the topic of foreign policy.

Gershman served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council during the first term of the Reagan Administration. "A 1987 article in The New Republic described these developments as a Trotskyist takeover of the Reagan administration" wrote .

National Endowment for Democracy

In 1984, Gershman was appointed president of the National Endowment for Democracy. In a 2006 interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Gershman said

In a 1982 speech at the Palace of Westminster, President Ronald Reagan proposed an initiative "to foster the infrastructure of democracy--the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities." The U.S. government, through USAID, contracted the American Political Foundation to study democracy promotion, which came to be known as "The Democracy Program." The program recommended the creation of a bipartisan, private, non-profit corporation to be known as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Under the program, NED, while non-governmental, would be funded primarily through annual appropriations from the U.S. government and subject to congressional oversight.

NED was established the following year, in 1983, by an Act of Congress. The House Foreign Affairs Committee proposed legislation to provide initial funding of $31.3 million for NED as part of the State Department Authorization Act (H.R. 2915). Included in the legislation was $13.8 million for the Free Trade Union Institute, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, much of which went to support Solidarity), a Polish labor union, $2.5 million for an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and $5 million each for two party institutes. The conference report on H.R. 2915 was adopted by the House on November 17, 1983 and by the U.S. Senate the following day. On November 18, 1983, articles of incorporation were filed in Washington, D.C. to establish the National Endowment for Democracy as a nonprofit organization.

NED is structured to act as a grant-making foundation, distributing funds to private non-governmental organizations for the purpose of promoting democracy abroad. Approximately half of NED's funding is allocated annually to four main U.S. organizations: the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), and the International Republican Institute (IRI). The other half of NED's funding is awarded annually to hundreds of non-governmental organizations based abroad, which apply for support.

Gershman openly stated that the NED did overtly what the CIA once did covertly. Among the shapers of the NED's agenda were Madeleine Albright ("We are the indispensable nation") and John McCain ("Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran").

On August 10, 2020, Gershman, along with 10 other U.S. individuals, was sanctioned by the Chinese government for "behaving badly on Hong Kong-related issues".

In 2021, Gershman was the subject of a hoax by Russian comedians Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov, who convinced Gershman and other NED officials they were speaking remotely to Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the Belarusian opposition leader, and an aide. Gersham said the NED "support many, many groups and we have a very, very active program throughout the country", and NED had contact with the chief aide to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Gershman retired as president of NED in summer 2021.

Publications

• {{citation

Awards

• The Polish government awarded the Order of the Knight's Cross
• award from Romania
• from the Chinese Education Democracy Foundation
• Light of Truth Award from the International Campaign for Tibet
• President's Award from George Washington University
• In 2019, the government of the Taiwanese Republic of China awarded Gershman the Order of Brilliant Star with Grand Cordon

Notes

References

• Revised and incorporated in

References

1. (October 2021). "Carl Gershman and the Struggle for Democracy". Journal of Democracy.
2. (January 19, 2022). "2021 Annual Report". National Endowment for Democracy.
3. Conference on World Affairs, University of Colorado. (29 March – 2 April 1971). "Who is who: 24th annual Conference on World Affairs". Prosopography Archive, Conference on World Affairs Archives at Norlin Library, University of Colorado.
4. Lipset, Seymour Martin. (Winter 1999). "Out of the Alcoves". [[Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars]].
5. Johnston, Laurie. (December 28, 1972). "Young Socialists defeat motion favoring recognition of Cuba". New York Times.
6. Anonymous. (December 27, 1972). "Young Socialists open parley; to weigh 'New Politics' split". New York Times.
7. Anonymous. (January 1, 1973). "'Firmness' urged on Communists: Social Democrats reach end of U.S. Convention here". New York Times.
8. Social Democrats, USA. (December 1972). "The American challenge: A social-democratic program for the seventies". S.D. U.S.A. and [[Young People's Socialist League (1907).
9. Gershman<!--, Carl. (December 1975). "The foreign policy of American labor". [[SAGE Publications]].
10. {{harvtxt. Reed. 1999
11. Gershman, Carl<!--. (November 3, 1980). "Totalitarian menace (Controversies: Detente and the left after Afghanistan)". Transactions (purchased by Springer).
12. Nossiter, Bernard D.. (March 3, 1981). "New team at U.N.: Common roots and philosophies". The New York Times.
13. "Meet Our President". [[National Endowment for Democracy]].
14. "History". National Endowment for Democracy.
15. "Grants". National Endowment for Democracy.
16. [[David Ignatius]]: [https://archive.today/20250913181408/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1991/09/22/innocence-abroad-the-new-world-of-spyless-coups/92bb989a-de6e-4bb8-99b9-462c76b59a16/#selection-835.0-835.70 INNOCENCE ABROAD: THE NEW WORLD OF SPYLESS COUPS], [[The Washington Post]], 21 September 1991
17. (21 October 2021). "What Is the N.E.D.'s Mission?".
18. (10 August 2020). "China sanctions Rubio, Cruz and other US officials for 'Hong Kong-related issues'". [[CNN]].
19. Bennetts, Marc. (19 May 2021). "We fund Russian democracy protesters, boasts US group". [[The Times]].
20. (2 June 2021). "National Endowment for Democracy Names Damon Wilson as New President".
21. (11 December 2019). "Human rights committee act passes". Taipei Times.
22. (10 December 2019). "Bill passed to establish Human Rights Committee under Control Yuan".