Gene Keyes
| Gene Keyes | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | October 24, 1941 |
| Residence | Berwick, Nova Scotia |
| Nationality | American (but resident of Canada since 1973) |
| Occupation | Assistant Professor of World Politics (retired) |
| Known for | Peace activism, Cahill-Keyes map projection, Strategic Nonviolent Defense and Unarmed Military Forces, Esperanto |
| Awards |
Honorable Mention - Cartography and Geographic Information Society 2013 (shared with Joe Roubal) for one-degree globe Best Map, Other Category, Cartography and Geographic Information Society 2014 (shared with Duncan Webb and Mary Jo Graça) for Cahill-Keyes World Political Map |
| Academic background | |
| Thesis title | Strategic Nonviolent Defense in Theory; Denmark in Practice |
| Thesis year | 1978 |
| Influences | Buckminster Fuller, Mohandas Gandhi, Gene Sharp, A.J. Muste |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | International Relations |
| Notable ideas | Strategic Nonviolence, Cahill-Keyes map projection |
Honorable Mention - Cartography and Geographic Information Society 2013 (shared with Joe Roubal) for one-degree globe
Gene Scott Keyes (born October 24, 1941) was an Assistant Professor of World Politics (now retired), a sometime peace activist, noted cartographer, and promoter of the international second language Esperanto. He achieved considerable attention for his peace activism when his mother, Charlotte E. Keyes wrote an article for McCall's, Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came (October 1966). The title phrase, based on a quote from a Carl Sandburg poem, became part of the anti-Vietnam-War lexicon. His cartography work has won a couple of awards.
Gene was born October 24, 1941 to Charlotte Keyes (née Shachmann) and Scott Keyes. His father was a Quaker by choice and his mother was Jewish. Both were pacifists. They had been anti-militarists in the 1930s though they both supported American involvement in World War II as they believed Hitler had to be stopped by force if necessary. After the war they became more involved with the Quaker movement. Young Gene absorbed his parents' pacifism even to the point of worrying about the insects his mother killed as she cleaned house.
Keyes has two brothers and one sister. His brother Ralph Keyes is the author of the best-seller Is There Life After High School which became a Broadway musical.
In 1968, Keyes married his girlfriend Jane Gordon. They moved to Canada in 1973 when Jane found employment there. They have two children, Jeremy David born in 1976 and Rachel Elizabeth born in 1979. In 1980 Jane filed for divorce demanding sole custody of the children. Without a lawyer, Keyes fought for equal-shared-parenting all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada but was only given limited "visitation" rights when the divorce was finalized in 1984. He has lived in Canada since 1973 but retained his American citizenship.
He has lived with his partner Mary Jo Graça since 1989. Currently Dr. Keyes is retired and living in Berwick, Nova Scotia, where he continues to manage his website, uploading material about B.J.S. Cahill, the Cahill-Keyes map, Esperanto, and strategic nonviolent defense.
After graduating high school, Keyes was accepted at Harvard, class of 1963, and during his time there joined demonstrations at Woolworth's in support of desegregating their stores in the American South (inspired by the Feb. 1960 Greensboro sit-ins), taught Spanish at the local jail, leafleted about nuclear weapons, and joined a variety of liberal groups. His activism led to a deterioration of his grades.
Then in February 1961, he left university to join Polaris Action, an activist group bent on civil disobedience to protest against nuclear weapons. Polaris submarines were nuclear-ballistic-missile firing boats now supplanted by the Trident fleet. He wrote his parents that "the business of Polaris Action is mostly leafleting, speaking, clerical, canvassing, with infrequent melodramatic and physically dangerous moments of submarine boarding. It's the Gandhian idea of lying across the railroad tracks, except we're lying across the Polaris submarines." He moved to New London, Connecticut to live on a farm with other members of the Polaris Action group. While his parents tried to dissuade him from actual civil disobedience, by August he was in jail for trying to board the submarine Ethan Allen. He served seventeen days.
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