As Co-Founder of Pacific News Service, Schurmann Inspired Independent Writing
August 31, 2010
Eminent scholar, historian and co-founder of Pacific News Service,
Franz Schurmann, passed away Aug. 20 at his home in San Francisco. He was 84.
The cause was advanced Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.
Schurmann was widely viewed as the foremost scholar of communist
China during the Cold War, and was an early opponent of the U.S. war
in Indochina.
He was the author of numerous books including "The Foreign Politics
of Richard Nixon: The Grand Design" and "The Logic of World Power: An
Inquiry into the Origins, Currents and Contradictions of World Politics."
Although Schurmann taught history and sociology at UC Berkeley for 38
years, those who knew him say he preferred to think of himself as an
explorer-journalist rather than as an academic.
He was fluent in 12 languages.
During the 1960's, Schurmann's knowledge of the histories and
cultures of the Far East gave him an expertise within the anti-war
movement that few other critics of American foreign policies of the
time commanded. In 1966, he coauthored, with Reginald Zelnik and
Peter Dale Scott, "The Politics of Escalation in Vietnam,"
documenting a parallel chain of command operating within the U.S.
military and intelligence agencies that intended to thwart White
House diplomacy.
His 1987 book, "The Foreign Politics of Richard Nixon," challenged
the almost universal demonization of Richard Nixon by America's
intelligentsia. The bookwhich credited Nixon rather than Kissinger
with Machiavellian brilliance in creating the architecture of the
post-Cold War worldnever won an audience among official Nixon
watchers, let alone academics.
Schurmann's last book, "American Soul," (2001) was a personal
narrative, a view of the world from 29th Avenue in San Francisco, at
the shore of the Pacific. He described an America that was
transforming the world and being transformed by the emergence of a
one-world culture and economy.
He attended Harvard following World War II on the GI Bill and earned
a Ph.D. in Asian Studies, despite not having received an undergraduate degree.
A founding member of the Faculty Peace Committee at UC Berkeley in
April 1965, Schurmann, along with anti-war intellectuals like Noam
Chomsky, Richard Barnett, Seymour Melman and Richard Falkgave an
intellectual backbone to the anti-war and Free Speech movements.
To promote independent research and writing, he founded the nonprofit
Bay Area Institute and later, with former student Orville Schell, the
Pacific News Service (PNS), in 1970.
Schurmann's devotion to Pacific News Service, a progressive media
source for writers and news organizations, reflected his passion for
newspapers. In 1974, his partner, Sandy Close, a former Hong
Kong-based journalist and founder of the Flatlands newspaper in
Oakland, Calif., took over the news service. For more than 35 years
the couple ran PNS as a shared enterprise.
Schurmann mentored colleagues at PNSfrom noted author and essayist
Richard Rodriguez to young writers at YO! and the Beat Within. Close
credits him for being the intellectual inspiration for the founding
of New America Media (NAM). "Franz was constantly shifting and
expanding his lens, drawing on his readings of foreign-language
media. PNS would never have made the breakthrough to NAM had it not
been for his example," Close said.
In the end, "This thinker and explorer whose gift was his ability to
listen and learn from so many ordinary people all over the world
finally retreated to the world of his mind, a universe by itself,"
Close said of Schurmann's last five years.
Schurmann is survived by Close, his partner of 42 years; his son Mark
Anderson Schurmann of Olympia, Washington; his son Peter Leon
Schurmann, daughter-in-law Aruna Lee and grandson Leon, all of San
Francisco; his sister, Dorothy Schurmann of Oakland; and a godson,
Hanif Bey of San Francisco.
A memorial service will be held at the UC Berkeley Alumni Center on
Sunday, Sept. 19 from 2 to 5 pm. Contributions may be made to the
Franz Schurmann Memorial Fund to support freelance journalists on
special travel assignments.
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