JODY WILLIAMS

Jody Williams

Jody Williams received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work to ban landmines through the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Williams continues to be recognized for her contributions to human rights and global security. She is the recipient of fifteen honorary degrees, among other recognitions. In 2004, Williams was named by Forbes Magazine as one of the 100 most powerful women in the world in the publication of its first such annual list.

She holds the Sam and Cele Keeper Endowed Professorship in Peace and Social Justice at the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston where she has been teaching since 2003. In academic year 2012-2013, she became the inaugural Jane Addams Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Social Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

 

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  • My Name is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl’s Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize

MY NAME IS JODY WILLIAMS: A VERMONT GIRL’S WINDING PATH TO THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

 

From her modest beginnings to becoming the tenth woman—and third American woman—to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Jody Williams takes the reader through the ups and downs of her tumultuous and remarkable life. In a voice that is at once candid, straightforward, and intimate, Williams describes her Catholic roots, her first step on a long road to standing up to bullies with the defense of her deaf brother Stephen, her transformation from good girl to college hippie at the University of Vermont, and her protest of the war in Vietnam. She relates how, in 1981, she began her lifelong dedication to global activism as she battled to stop the U.S.-backed war in El Salvador.

Throughout the memoir, Williams underlines her belief that an “average woman”—through perseverance, courage and imagination—can make something extraordinary happen. She tells how, when asked if she’d start a campaign to ban and clear anti-personnel mines, she took up the challenge, and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) was born. Her engrossing account of the genesis and evolution of the campaign, culminating in 1997 with the Nobel Peace Prize, vividly demonstrates how one woman’s commitment to freedom, self-determination, and human rights can have a profound impact on people all over the globe.

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Doug recalls: “Jody won the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless effort to ban land mines and rather famously called Bill Clinton a “weeny” for not signing it. She is a straight-talking, no-holds-barred global hero, and her memoir is equally honest, powerful, and inspiring. The everywoman’s Nobel Laureate, Jody Williams shows that you don’t have to be Mother Teresa to win the peace prize and change the world. In this raw and powerful memoir, Williams shares the story of her sometimes rough and always unexpected path, from defending the weak against bullies in a tiny town in Vermont to launching a breakthrough global grassroots campaign that banned landmines around the world.”

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“She is a straight-talking, no-holds-barred global hero, and her memoir is equally honest, powerful, and inspiring. “

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