Mark Rudd

Mark Rudd
Mark Rudd (right) with Tom Hayden Strand Bookstore, New York City, 2007
Born	(1947-06-02) June 2, 1947 (age 69) Irvington, New Jersey
Spouse(s)	Marla Painter

Mark William Rudd (born June 2, 1947) is a political organizer, mathematics instructor, anti-war activist and counterculture icon most well known for his involvement with the Weather Underground.

Rudd became a member of the Columbia University chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1963. By 1968, he had emerged as a leader for Columbia's SDS chapter. During the 1968 Columbia University Protests, he served as spokesperson for dissident students protesting a variety of issues, most notably the Vietnam War. As the war escalated, Mark Rudd worked with other youth movement leaders to take SDS in a more militant direction. When the general membership of SDS refused to go in a more violent and pro-Communist direction, Rudd together with some other prominent SDS members formed a radical, violence-oriented organization, referring to themselves collectively as "Weatherman" after the lyrics from a famous Bob Dylan song.

Rudd went "underground" in 1970, hiding from law enforcement following the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion that killed three of his Weather Underground peers. He surrendered to authorities in 1977, serving a short jail sentence. After serving as a mathematics instructor at Central New Mexico Community College, he is now retired in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and has since expressed some regret for advocating and using violence.

Rudd was born in Irvington, New Jersey. His father, Jacob S. Rudd (1909–1995), was born Jacob Shmuel Rudnitsky in Stanislower, Poland; he was a former army officer who sold real estate in Maplewood, New Jersey. His mother, Bertha Bass (1912–2009), was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the year after her parents emigrated from Lithuania. Rudd had a brother, David R. Rudd (1939–2009), who became an attorney. His family was Jewish. Rudd attended Columbia High School in his hometown of Maplewood, New Jersey, and later Columbia University in New York.