Jonathan Edward Schell (August 21, 1943 – March 25, 2014) was an American reporter and writer whose work primarily dealt with American foreign policy from theVietnam War to theWar on Terror, as well as the threat posed bynuclear weapons and support fornuclear disarmament.
Schell was born inNew York City on August 21, 1943, to Orville Hickock Schell Jr., a lawyer who chairedAmericas Watch, and Marjorie Bertha.[1][2] His siblings included a sister, Suzanne, and a brother,Orville Schell, a former Dean of theUniversity of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and, since 2006,[update] the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.–China Relations atAsia Society in New York.[3] He studied atDalton School in New York and graduated fromThe Putney School in Vermont.[2] In 1965 he graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Far Eastern history. He then spent a year learning Japanese at theInternational Christian University in Tokyo.[1]
After completing his studies in Tokyo, Schell flew toSaigon in January 1967, asAmerican involvement in theVietnam War continued to escalate.[4] He managed to acquire apress pass by claiming to be a correspondent forThe Harvard Crimson, and would later recount how thecorrespondents reporting on the war "took [him] under their wing".[5] He was a witness toOperation Cedar Falls, writing particularly on the destruction ofBến Súc.[6] His reportage was published first inThe New Yorker and then as a book,The Village of Ben Suc, withAlfred A. Knopf.[5]
His second book,The Military Half: An Account of Destruction in Quang Ngai and Quang Tin, published in 1968, also drew a graphic picture of the devastating effects of American bombings and ground operations onQuảng Ngãi Province andQuảng Tín Province in South Vietnam.[2][7]
Never has a nation unleashed so much violence with so little risk to itself. It is the government's way of waging war without the support of its own people, and involves us all in the dishonor of killing in a cause we are no longer willing to die for.
From 1967 until 1987, Schell was a staff writer atThe New Yorker, where he served as the principal writer of the magazine's Notes and Comment section. He wrote essays for the magazine on thepresidency of Richard Nixon, including theWatergate scandal that led to the president's resignation in 1974, that formed the basis to his book,The Time of Illusion. The Notes and Comments section was awarded theGeorge Polk Award for Commentary in 1979.[9]
In 1977,William Shawn, the longtime editor-in-chief ofThe New Yorker, designated Schell as his chosen successor to replace him but he was forced to rescind that plan as it proved immediately unpopular with the magazine's staff.[10]: 238–242 Shawn revisited the same plan in 1982 but again withdrew Schell's name from consideration in the face of a staff revolt. Ultimately, upon a change of ownership of the magazine in 1987, Shawn was removed and replaced as editor-in-chief withRobert Gottlieb.[10]: 258
In the early 1980s, Schell wrote a series of articles inThe New Yorker, subsequently published in 1982 asThe Fate of the Earth, which were instrumental in raising public awareness about the dangers of thenuclear arms race and became an essential part of theNuclear Freeze campaign.[11][12] The book received theLos Angeles Times Book Prize, and was nominated for thePulitzer Prize, theNational Book Award, and theNational Book Critics Circle Award.[4][13] He became an advocate fordisarmament and a world free ofnuclear weapons.[4]
In 1987, Schell was a fellow at theHarvard Institute of Politics at theJohn F. Kennedy School of Government, and in 2002 he served as a fellow at the Kennedy School'sShorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.[14] He was a visiting lecturer atYale Law School in 2003, and a fellow at theYale Center for the Study of Globalization in 2005.[15] He taught at several other universities, includingPrinceton,Emory,New York University,The New School, andWesleyan University.[16] At the time of his death he was a visiting lecturer atYale College.[1]
He was a columnist forNewsday from 1990 until 1996.[14] From 1998 to his death in 2014, he was a senior fellow atThe Nation Institute and the peace and disarmament correspondent forThe Nation magazine.[16] In addition, he wrote forTomDispatch,Harper's Magazine,Foreign Affairs, andThe Atlantic.[14][17]
In 2002 and 2003, Schell was a persistent critic of theinvasion of Iraq.[18] He later commented, "There doesn't seem to be a rush to find the people who were right about Iraq and install them in the mainstream media."[19]
Jonathan Schell died at age 70, on March 25, 2014, at his home inBrooklyn, with a cancer caused by an underlying blood condition that may have been caused byAgent Orange. His last years were spent in research on climate change for an unwritten book he titledThe Human Shadow.[20]
In 1967,John Mecklin wrote inThe New York Times Book Review thatThe Village of Ben Suc, Jonathan Schell's first book, was "written with a skill that many a veteran war reporter will envy, eloquently sensitive, subtly clothed in an aura of detachment, understated, extraordinarily persuasive."[21]
ReviewingThe Military Half: An Account of Destruction in Quang Ngai and Quang Tin, journalist and historianJonathan Mirsky wrote inThe Nation: "I know no book which has made me angrier and more ashamed."[2]
On its publication in 1982,The Fate of the Earth was described byKai Erikson inThe New York Times Book Review as "a work of enormous force" and "an event of profound historical moment ... [I]n the end, it accomplishes what no other work has managed to do in the 37 years of the nuclear age. It compels us—and compel is the right word—to confront head on the nuclear peril in which we all find ourselves."[22] The book also reflected on the end of love, politics and art, and theannihilation of humans as a species.CBS News journalistWalter Cronkite called the book "one of the most important works of recent years", praise that helped to solidify the book's commercial success.[1]
In an 'Author's Note' to his collection of five short stories entitledEinstein's Monsters (1987), the Anglo-American writerMartin Amis said this about Schell's writings regarding nuclear weapons: "And throughout I am grateful to Jonathan Schell, for ideas and imagery. I don't know why he is our best writer on this subject. He is not the most stylish, perhaps, nor the most knowledgeable. But he is the most decorous and, I think, the most pertinent. He has moral accuracy; he is unerring."[23]
Writing inForeign Affairs magazine, however, David Greenberg calledThe Fate of the Earth an "overwrought doomsday polemic."[24] Two decades later, inSlate,Michael Kinsley characterized it as "an overheated stew of the obvious and the idiotic" and suggested it was "the silliest book ever taken seriously by serious people."[25] TheLos Angeles Times noted that "some reviewers found Schell's book shrill and overstated."[4]
ReviewingThe Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger inThe New York Times Book Review in 2007,Martin Walker characterized it as "a passionate and cogently argued case for the complete abolition of nuclear weapons ... There is little in Schell's book that is new, but his careful assembly of the available evidence will scare the pants off most readers. And so it should."[26]
In 2019, philosopherAkeel Bilgrami described Schell as "one of the great public intellectuals of our time,"[27]: x and describedThe Fate of the Earth as a "rightly celebrated classic".[27]: x
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The preeminent intellectual associated with [the Nuclear Freeze] movement, Jonathan Schell ...
