Staughton Lynd has been a bridge between the worlds of labor activism and labor
history. Like E.P. Thompson and David Montgomery his scholarship has been shaped
and inspired by his vision of social change.
This past Spring, LAWCHA honored Lynd by awarding him our Distinguished Service Award. Staughton’s acts of conscience and his unshakable integrity led to his denial of
tenure at Yale, the most famous of innumerable such cases in the second phase of Cold
War academic persecution and hysteria during the Vietnam War. Not by choice but
out of necessity, Staughton had to redefine himself as a historian and a labor and social
justice advocate, thereafter working outside the academy.
