Robert Greenblatt (anti war activist)

Robert "Bob" Greenblatt (May 14, 1938 – October 21, 2009) is best known as an early opponent of America's military involvement in Viet Nam and was the founding co-chairman and national coordinator of The National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. He is the first cousin, once removed, of Trump advisor Jason Greenblatt and Canadian religious leader and Holocaust educator Eli Rubenstein

Greenblatt was born in Debrecen, Hungary and was a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps in Germany and Austria until his release with the end of the war. He moved to the United States with his parents Julius and Pessie in 1949.

He studied at Yeshiva Chaim Berlin, then attended Brooklyn College, then Yale, where he received his Phd in Mathematics in 1963, at the age of 25, under American mathematician William Schumacher Massey (a remarkable feat for a child Holocaust survivor who immigrated to the U.S after the war at 11 years of age, considering the average Phd is achieved at 33 years of age.)

Greenblatt became an assistant professor of Mathematics at Cornell University where he met Bruce Dancis, the first student to tear up his draft card and send it back to the draft board. In 1966, Greenblatt became very involved in the anti war movement and organized a series of teach-ins in order to "educate Americans about the tragic errors of our Vietnam policies." He was also vice president of their sponsoring organization, the Inter-University Committee for Debate on Foreign Policy A large part of his focus was encouraging all white college students to drop-out of school so as not to be a part of draft deferments which discriminate against negroes who are too poor to get a higher education. He left his post at the university to devote himself full-time to the cause. He said "I am a former professor of mathematics, that was before I became a drop-out." He instructed white students saying, "Take a few courses, but not enough to qualify as a full-time student and be deferred. You have better things to do."

In June 1966, Greenblatt was ordered to jail for his activities but was released soon after.He was one of the chief organizers of the Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam, scheduled for both New York City and San Francisco on April 15, 1967. Organizers had expected only 150,000 but estimates showed between 300,000 and 400,000 attended. On October 21, Greenblatt was an organizer of a march on The Pentagon. It was purposely arranged for a weekend because "We checked that out and found that 25,000 people work in the Pentagon during the week. But most of these are secretarial and clerical personnel. The 7,000 who work on week-ends are the people we want to reach. They are the decision-making military men, and for them, war-making is a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week occupation."

...
Wikipedia