Norman Cousins (June 24, 1915 – November 30, 1990) was an American political journalist, author, professor, and world peace through world state advocate.
. . .In the 1950s, Cousins played a prominent role in bringing the Hiroshima Maidens, a group of twenty-five Hibakusha, to the United States for medical treatment. He served as president of the World Federalist Association and chairman of the Committee for Sane Nuclear Policy, which warned that the world was bound for a nuclear holocaust if the threat of the nuclear arms race was not stopped. In the 1960s, he began the American-Soviet Dartmouth Conferences for peace process. Following the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy saw that he was the proper person to find the terms that would be accepted by Nikita Khrushchev to avert nuclear war. Both sides used unofficial intermediaries to relay messages outside the usual diplomatic routes. For example Kennedy used Norman Cousins, who was well appreciated in Moscow for his leadership of SANE, the Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy. This helped the two leaders forge the highly successful Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963. For his role he was thanked by President John F. Kennedy and Pope John XXIII; the Pope also awarded him his personal medallion. Cousins was also awarded the Eleanor Roosevelt Peace Award in 1963, the Family Man of the Year Award in 1968, the United Nations Peace Medal in 1971, and the Niwano Peace Prize and the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, both in 1990. He also served on the board of trustees for Science Service, now known as Society for Science & the Public, from 1972 to 1975.
An excerpt from, "The improbable triumvirate Khrushchev, Kennedy, and Pope John" by Norman Cousins:
In 1963, a new spirit of hopefulness was abroad in the world. The upturn was largely the result of a strange and magnificent interaction among three men: President John F. Kennedy, Pope John XXIII, and Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev. Ideologically and personally, they were one of history’s most implausible triumvirates: an American President, a Pope, a Communist. What brought them together was the vulnerability of civilization to modern destructive power. The particular event that gave blistering reality to their common concern was the Cuban crisis of October 1962.
The crisis over Cuba was bridged but the terror it produced created a new sense of resolution and dedication.
At American University on June 10, 1963, President Kennedy proposed an end to the Cold War. The proposal produced an affirmative response from Prime Minister Khrushchev. Pope John used the full weight of the Papacy to speak about the need for world peace under law. His encyclical Pacem in Terris was perhaps his single most important document. It called for a new spirit of world cooperation in building an enduring world order.
Video Title: Norman Cousins - The Challenge to Change - 1984. Source: Quest For Peace. Date Published: May 23, 2012.
