In Memoriam: Cora and Peter Weiss

In loving memory of the peace founders we honour and remember, written by Colin Archer and Tomas Magnusson. Photo credit to Legacy.com.

It is with deep sadness that the International Peace Bureau announces the death, at the age of 91, of our former President Cora Weiss (USA). Cora was a towering figure in IPB’s modern history, taking the roles of Vice-President, President (2000-2006), and then Past President and UN rep (NY). As President she took over from Maj-Britt Theorin, and was succeeded by Tomas Magnusson and later others. 

IPB programmes

Her contributions to IPB’s work can be grouped into three main programme areas. From around 1989 to 1996 she worked to support her husband Peter’s work (see separate tribute below) to bring the nuclear weapons issue to the International Court of Justice (the World Court Project, in which IPB played a major role). When the Advisory Opinion was handed down in 1996, it was time to plan the next big operation. The Hague Appeal for Peace, which climaxed in a major international conference in the Dutch capital in 1999 brought together 10,000 participants and numerous very distinguished participants, not least Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General and several Nobel laureates. The theme was ‘Time to Abolish War!’. We ran 4 offices (New York, The Hague, Geneva, Boston) and there were 100 organisations on the Organising Council. The HAP’s follow up programme was the establishment of the Global Campaign for Peace Education, which still exists to this day. Cora worked closely with the renowned feminist educator Betty Reardon, who was succeeded as coordinator by Tony Jenkins. This education work involved a special partnership with UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, at one stage employing staff on four continents (Peru, Niger, Cambodia, Albania). In 1994 she co-organised a special IPB-led ‘peace tourism’ visit to N. Ireland, to encourage civil society to influence the nascent peace process there. 

Throughout her time at IPB, Cora worked to promote younger women activists and to raise the profile of work under the title ‘Women and Peace’, such as the project in Eastern Europe to celebrate the centenary of Bertha von Suttner’s 1905 Nobel Peace Prize. Among the achievements she was most proud of was the 2000 UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women and peace, and the influence civil society brought to bear to make it happen. Cora was an active delegate to the World Council of Churches’ Third World Conference on Women (Nairobi, 1995), and the NGO Women’s Forum, Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995). She worked to create peace tents, places for women to speak and convene, at both conferences. 

Family

Cora was an activist all her life. Raised in a liberal Jewish family, she was fortunate to inherit considerable wealth from her father Samuel Rubin, who had made his money through the Fabergé perfume company. The family set up a foundation in his memory in 1959. This gave Cora a significant platform with which to support progressive organisations, both in the USA and abroad. These included the Institute for Policy Studies, the Transnational Institute, and the IPB. 

She met Peter while at law school, they married in 1956 and had three children. Over time, she and Peter became significant figures on the American Left, participating in a wide range of organisations and coalitions. They were indeed a ‘power couple’. 

Campaigns

Among the very many other campaigns and organisations in which she took a leading role we can list the following:

1959-1963: Executive Director of the African-American Students Foundation – an ‘African airlift’ programme which brought to the US for studies many important figures including Obama’s father and Tom Mboya of Kenya.

1961: Women Strike for Peace – one of the key movements opposed to nuclear testing.

Late 1960s: Anti Vietnam war organisations, notably the very large mobilisation in 1969. Following this she organised visits to Hanoi to help release US servicemen. She was co-Chair of the Committee of Liaison With Families of Servicemen Detained in North Vietnam.

1970s: SANE/Freeze (re-named Peace Action in 1993), the largest US peace organisation. Cora represented them on the IPB Board.

1977–1987: Director of the peace programme at Riverside Church in New York City– working closely with William Sloane Coffin. The programme connected with the work of Martin Luther King and also Coretta King.

1982: She was a key organiser of the huge demonstration for disarmament at the time of the UN’s Second Special Session for Disarmament, which drew over 1 million participants.

Over her final 20 years, Cora supported political initiatives on many issues; and worked on her archives. A very extensive set of interviews and transcript can be found at the Columbia University Oral History Centre. 

Various colleagues have described Cora as a ‘strong and brilliant’ person. She was certainly a dominant personality, a gifted public speaker, and an effective manager. She was especially good at bringing people together via social occasions in many places, and encouraging connections across and between movements all over the world. “Her leadership was distinguished by moral conviction, a belief in dialogue, and an unwavering commitment to the idea that peace must be built through justice and inclusion. Even late into her life, she remained active in peace education initiatives and global forums, mentoring younger activists and continuing to push for a world without war.”(Aditya Dhulia)

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Peter Weiss (USA) was a leading force in the lawyers’ movement against nuclear weapons, and a key player in two notable IPB projects. He contributed to IPB as speaker and active participant in conferences, and through his partnership with our former President Cora Weiss. 

The role of lawyers in the World Court Project – an international effort to bring the question of the legal status of nuclear weapons to the World Court – was obviously crucial. As Co-President of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA – an IPB member organisation), one of the three international NGOs leading the campaign, he was able to gather the necessary expertise to persuade campaigners and politicians alike to act. Working together, in 1996 we succeeded in securing a formal reference to the Court for an Advisory Opinion under Article 96 of the UN Charter. The argument that this was a viable, and indeed most promising, path towards the abolition of atomic weapons, rested on the work that Peter and his colleagues did to establish the legal fundamentals. Peter continued to work for and with the NGO community as the campaign gave rise to other projects: notably the Nuclear Weapons Convention, Abolition 2000 and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

While the Hague Appeal for Peace was advanced by an extraordinarily vast coalition of NGOs, it was ultimately Cora who, as President, was in the driving seat. But Peter was present at her side and actively advising all the way through the long and complex process – from its inception in 1996 to the work done to build the Global Campaign for Peace Education as a distinct follow-up organisation up until around 2005. 

Peter died only one month before his wife, at the age of 99.

Obituary at: https://www.legacy.com/legacy/peter-weiss