UMass Amherst Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) has recently acquired the invaluable private archive of Daniel Ellsberg, one of the foremost political activists and whistleblowers in the U.S. The archive spans the late 1940s to the 2010s and includes a wealth of material providing insight into the top-secret Pentagon Papers that he leaked to the press in 1971, as well as materials on the Vietnam War more broadly, the Cuban Missile Crisis, his criminal trial, anti-war and anti-nuclear movements, and more.
The collection promises to be a watershed for historians – as well as for SCUA. “This has potential to be transformational for the archive,” remarked SCUA head Rob Cox. The acquisition emerges out of the archive’s longstanding commitment to collecting interconnected histories of social justice work “in the [W.E.B.] Du Boisian fashion of thinking about how social change actually happens,” says Cox, and from the its particular strengths in the areas of work that Ellsberg is engaged in. “There’s been a lot of excitement from researchers already,” he notes.
In an exclusive interview with the UMass History Department’s blog @email, the 88-year-old Ellsberg explains why he donated his documents to the W.E.B. Du Bois Library and what they will offer to researchers and historians. “I would like people to come to realize,” he tells @email, “how much is concealed, even after long periods of time, from scholars, historians, journalists, and the public, and even Congress of what our foreign policy or our so-called defense policy and arms policy really is.”
Please click here to read the entire interview.