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Peter Weiss Collected Papers
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Held at: Swarthmore College Peace Collection [Contact Us]500 College Avenue, Swarthmore 19081-1399
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Peter Weiss was born in Vienna (Austria) in 1925, and came to the United States in 1941. He served in the U.S. Army from 1944-1946, and with the U.S. Military Government in Berlin (Germany) in 1947. After graduating cum laude from St. John's College in Annapolis (Maryland), he attended Yale Law school in 1949-1952. After graduation, he founded and became the executive director of the International Development Placement Association, a precursor of the Peace Corps. He practiced law from 1955 to 2006, dividing his time between representing multinational companies, as a specialist in trademark law, and doing pro bono work in the fields of human rights, constitutional law, and nuclear weapons law.
Weiss is currently President of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, and Vice President of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He is a member of the Executive Committee of Americans for Peace Now, which supports the Peace Now movement in Israel. He was a founder, and later President, of the American Committee on Africa.
The material in this small collection was removed from the papers of Peter Weiss' wife, Cora. They represent primarily his involvements with the Foundation for World Government in 1946-1951 (including his research trip to Israel in 1950), the International Development Placement Association (IDPA) in 1952-1954, and the Foreign Policy Council of New York Democrats in 1966-1967 (which led to his being a delegate from the Bronx to the Democratic National Convention in 1968, where he was arrested).
The Swarthmore College Peace Collection is the official repository for these papers/records.
Gift of Cora Weiss, 2007 [Acc. 07A-044]
For the catalog record for this collection, and to find materials on similar topics, search the library's online catalog
Processed by Anne M. Yoder, Archivist, September 2009
People
Organization
- Foreign Policy Council of New York Democrats
- Foundation for World Government
- International Development Placement Association (New York, N.Y.)
- Democratic Party (N.Y.)
Subject
- International organization -- History -- Sources
- International relations -- History -- Sources
- World politics -- History -- Sources
- Voluntarism -- Developing countries -- History -- Sources
- Voluntarism -- United States -- History -- Sources
- Volunteer workers in community development -- Developing countries -- History -- Sources
Place
- Publisher
- Swarthmore College Peace Collection
- Access Restrictions
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None
- Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendents, as stipulated by United States copyright law.
- Use Restrictions
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None