Scope and Contents

Approximately six linear feet of books donated to the archive by Murray Polner. These books are about the Anti-War and Civil Rights Movements, and a variety of Vietnam War related topics.

Biographical / Historical

Murray Polner (1928-2019) was a New York-based writer and editor. He was the editor of Present Tense magazine (published by the American Jewish Committee) from 1973-1970 and also wrote and edited voluminous articles and books on Vietnam veterans, amnesty for draft resisters, and anti-war activists such as Daniel and Philip Berrigan. He was a pacifist and proponent of conscientious objector (CO) status for and counseled many draft-age young men in the 1960s and 1970s about the legally sanctioned alternative to mandatory conscription.

Polner’s interest in American military involvement in Southeast Asia began in the late 1960s when he was teaching political science and history at Suffolk Community College. A trained historian with a PhD in Russian history, he conducted and published social-science research weighing the future consequences that returning U.S. veterans were likely to face after serving in a war which was undeclared by Congress and, unlike U.S. intervention in World War II, was unpopular among many segments of American society, including many G.I.’s and veterans themselves.

He went on to author an oral history collection on returning veterans, entitled “No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran" (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971). It was one of the first books to suggest that veterans' readjustment would be complex and problematic. The more than 100 books and materials in this collection reflect Polner's long-time interest in Vietnam veterans, the Vietnam war, to which he was opposed, and the century-long escalation of U.S. militarism globally in the name of “Pax Americana.”