Jody Williams: Nobel Peace Prize laureate, activist, and author

The 10th woman in the world to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Jody Williams has recently published her memoir, My Name Is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl’s Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize.

As Eve Ensler says in her foreword to this book, “Jody Williams is many things — a simple girl from Vermont, a sister of a disabled brother, a loving wife, an intense character full of fury and mischief, a great strategist, an excellent organizer, a brave and relentless advocate, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. But to me Jody Williams is, first and foremost, an activist.”

From her modest beginnings to becoming the 10th woman — and third American woman — to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Jody Williams takes the reader through the ups and downs of her tumultuous and remarkable life.

In a voice that is at once candid, straightforward, and intimate, Williams describes her Catholic roots, her first step on a long road to standing up to bullies with the defense of her deaf brother Stephen, her transformation from good girl to college hippie at the University of Vermont, and her protest of the war in Vietnam. She relates how, in 1981, she began her lifelong dedication to global activism as she battled to stop the U.S.-backed war in El Salvador.

Jody Williams at GW: She will deliver the keynote lecture at GW on Monday, March 4, at 10 a.m., for the Global Gender Program’s celebration of International Women’s Day. She will address the role of civil society in preventing violence against women.