21/12/2017 Gene Sharp, Theorist of Power - The New York Times

https://nyti.ms/N26hH1

T MAGAZINE

The Quiet American

Talk

By JANINE DI GIOVANNI SEPT. 3, 2012

On a quiet street in an unfashionable East Boston neighborhood not far from Logan
Airport lives an 84-year-old man whom dictators around the world fear and despise.
On the morning I go to meet Gene Sharp, the taxi driver cannot even find his house,
and there is no sign on the door to mark the building as headquarters of the Albert
Einstein Institution, the nonprofit organization he founded in 1983. When I arrive,
Jamila Raqib, the institution’s executive director, answers the door dressed in jeans
and a T-shirt. “We want to be low-key,” she says. “And keep it that way.”

Sharp, a former University of Massachusetts professor who has written 11

books, is widely regarded as the godfather of nonviolent revolution. His 93-page
book, “From Dictatorship to Democracy,” is available on the Internet in 24 languages
and was as influential to would-be revolutionaries during last year’s Arab Spring as
any other text. His work was reportedly taught in training workshops for Egyptian
revolutionaries long before the events in Tahrir Square. And it has been used by
activists in Zimbabwe, Estonia, Serbia, Vietnam, Burma and Lithuania. Officials in
Damascus and Iran have accused him of being a C.I.A. agent.

Sharp isn’t in direct contact with the activists who protested in Tahrir Square, or
in Homs, or in Tunis. He watched the Egyptian revolution on TV like the rest of us.
He is reluctant to take credit and insists that it is the people, not him, who influenced
their own revolutions.

Unlike Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr., whom Sharp admired (Coretta Scott
King wrote an introduction to one of Sharp’s books), he is not a practitioner of

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/t-magazine/gene-sharp-theorist-of-power.html 1/7
21/12/2017 Gene Sharp, Theorist of Power - The New York Times

nonviolent movements but rather a theorist of power. People assume positions of

power, he asserts, not by some intrinsic individual strength but solely by the
populace who puts them there. When enough people withdraw their support of a
repressive regime for long enough, it topples. His work is not based on religious
belief or higher moral principles of peaceful human coexistence but rather is starkly
pragmatic: his seminal 1973 trilogy, “The Politics of Nonviolent Action,” lays out 198
methods of resistance that do not kill or destroy, including “sick-ins,” mock elections
and the refusal to use government currency. He writes that “exhortations in favor of
love and nonviolence have made little or no contribution to ending war and major
political violence. It seemed to me that only adoption of a substitute type of sanction
and struggle . . . could possibly lead to a major reduction of political violence.”
Violence, Sharp says, is “your enemy’s best weapon.” Dictators will only try to crush
rebellions.

Sharp is part of a tradition of academics whose work finds expression among

political interventionists outside the academy — think of Noam Chomsky’s writing
on United States foreign policy or Cornel West’s work on racial inequality. But Sharp
himself will not presume to know which countries need reform. “I don’t talk about
what needs changing or where,” he says quietly in his soft Midwestern voice. “It’s up
to the people themselves to decide to change.”

Sharp’s modesty can at times seem at odds with his stature. His office is tiny and
cluttered and dusty, full of boxes left unpacked from the day he moved to it in 2004.
“I’m sorry for the mess,” he says at one point, pointing to the boxes and piles of
books. When he remarks that he still can’t find his Oxford English Dictionary, I tell
him it’s available online and he looks bemused. Sharp’s office is not a tech-enabled
zone. There is a sign hanging on the wall — written by Raqib, who has been with him
for 10 years — instructing him how to send an e-mail. “To open a blank file. . . . ” He
does not use Facebook or Twitter or even read his organization’s Web site.
The Albert Einstein Institution consists of him, Raqib and an assistant she found
working at a coffee shop around the corner. Sharp’s only sanctuary away from his
work is his orchid room, which visitors are not invited to visit.

But to listen to those whom Sharp has inspired is to understand his place among
the great teachers of peaceful resistance. “If there is one powerful message to send to

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/t-magazine/gene-sharp-theorist-of-power.html 2/7
21/12/2017 Gene Sharp, Theorist of Power - The New York Times

the world — that nonviolent social change is the way to change it for the better —
then there is nobody else who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize more than Gene,” says
Srdja Popovic, a young Serb who first encountered Sharp’s work during the revolt
against Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, and who now runs the Center for Applied
Nonviolent Action and Strategies in Belgrade. Popovic calls Sharp “the Master” and
uses his theories while teaching activists around the world, including those in Syria,
Iran and the Maldives. (In Sharp’s office hangs a poster that reads, “GOTOV JE!” —
“He’s finished!” — the rallying cry that Popovic and his comrades sent to thousands
of cellphones during their first attempt at overthrowing the Serbian dictator.)

And according to Dr. Mary Elizabeth King, a professor of peace and conflict
studies at the University for Peace, an affiliate of the United Nations, “Gene has, in
my opinion, probably done more for building peace than any person alive. Because
without broader knowledge of how to fight for social change and justice without
violence, it is unlikely that more peaceable societies will evolve. Postconflict societies
need Gene’s writings to help prevent a relapse into civil war.”

Sharp is uncomfortable talking about himself, and he shifts in his chair when I
ask him about his early years. He was raised by a Protestant clergyman who moved
the family around a lot before settling in Columbus, Ohio, when Sharp was 15. “My
childhood was not important,” he says, adding that he was aware of racial inequality
and participated in a luncheonette sit-in. “I knew there was a war and a Nazi
system,” he says. “That, and the atomic bomb influenced me, I suppose. And later, as
an undergraduate, Gandhi.”

He received his master’s degree from Ohio State University in 1951. By 1953, he
was in New York, first in Harlem, then Brooklyn. He was employed as an elevator
operator and a guide for a blind social worker for a while. “I wasn’t interested in
having a real job,” he says. “I wanted subway fare and food and to research Gandhi.”
He wrote to Albert Einstein, at Princeton, and asked if he would contribute an
introduction to the book. To Sharp’s shock, he agreed.

When the Korean War broke out, Sharp, then 25, took a stance of civil
disobedience and conscientious objection to the draft and was given a prison
sentence of two years. He was transferred from the detention center on West Street

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/t-magazine/gene-sharp-theorist-of-power.html 3/7
21/12/2017 Gene Sharp, Theorist of Power - The New York Times

in New York to the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Conn. Sharp says he
could have gotten 14 years but served only “9 months and 10 days.”

“The first six months weren’t bad,” he recalls. “After that, the constant
regimentation was hard. I could read books but I could not do any research.”

After his release in 1954, Sharp worked for A. J. Muste, whom he calls “the most
famous American pacifist.” Then he took off for Europe: in England he worked for
Peace News, writing articles about the Suez crisis and the British invasion of Egypt.
In Norway, he worked for Arne Naess, a professor at the University of Oslo and a
Gandhi devotee.

Sharp’s years in Norway had a profound influence on him. The Norwegian

resistance movement against fascism and the pro-Nazi regime of Vidkun Quisling
used civil disobedience, among other forms of nonviolent resistance, in their
educational system. Teachers taught against the fascist system in schools and
distributed illegal newspapers while maintaining social distance from German
soldiers.

“There were other methods, such as wearing a potato or a toothpick on their

clothes, to protest the occupation,” Sharp says. (Much later, the Serbs would use
street theater as a method of bringing down Milosevic — for instance, creating an
effigy of the dictator’s head and allowing people to bash it with a bat as a game, then
running away when the police arrived.) Sharp stayed in Norway for two and a half
years and lived for a time with a family who had a history of resistance.

“Everyone always talks about the boys in the mountains fighting against the
Nazis,” he says, “but what interested me was the teachers, the clergy and the labor
movement. Those were the real resisters.” From Norway, he went to Oxford,
eventually making his way — living from one grant or teaching job to another — to a
professorship at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.

When Sharp gave a lecture at Harvard in 1988, Retired Colonel Robert Helvey
was a senior Army fellow at the university’s Center for International Affairs. On his
first day, Helvey saw a notice by the elevator announcing a nonviolent sanctions
seminar. He had nothing else to do that afternoon, so he slipped into the classroom

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/t-magazine/gene-sharp-theorist-of-power.html 4/7
21/12/2017 Gene Sharp, Theorist of Power - The New York Times

just as Sharp was beginning to lecture. “He did not seem to care about his clothing,”
Helvey says of his first impression of Sharp. “I saw similar styles at the local
Goodwill.” But what the professor did care about, Helvey recalls, was the truth. “He
was obviously careful about his words, precise, and clearly a cut above the egocentric
image of some Ivy League professors.” Helvey emerged from the lecture with an
entirely new frame of reference as a soldier, something he has held tight ever since.

“I think Gene’s work has changed how we think about conflict resolution,”
Helvey says. “There are options other than massive bloodshed and destruction to
bring political change.” He continues, “We now have an alternative to war as a
means for people to liberate themselves from tyranny, to deter would-be tyrants and
lesser authoritarian rulers.” Helvey, who helped the Serbian democracy movement
overthrow Milosevic, adds, “Gene is a deep thinker. He has a quest to bring truth to
our society.”

Sharp lives mostly in the world of books, but he has not always stayed behind
his desk. In 1989, he went to Tiananmen Square during the uprising and talked to
protesters. In the 1990s he sneaked into rebel camps in Burma.

Where, I ask him, do people find the courage to fight against dictators? He
thinks hard.

“I honestly don’t know,” he admits. “I never studied it.” They would not think of
their actions as fearless, he says, “it becomes second nature to them. What matters is
that they can. And they do it.”

As Sharp talks, I think about all the activists in Syria today who work
underground, communicating via Skype or encrypted e-mails to protest the regime.
If they are caught, they will be tortured and sent to prison. (Even peaceful protesters
are sent to jail, without their families being notified, for up to 45 days; there are
currently 35,000 people in detention in Syria, according to recent human rights
reports.)

“But people continue,” he says, “because it works. When you start withdrawing
your cooperation, the regime won’t like it. They will start beating, torturing, stopping

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/t-magazine/gene-sharp-theorist-of-power.html 5/7
21/12/2017 Gene Sharp, Theorist of Power - The New York Times

you. They will instill fear. But if you are not afraid” — here he pauses and thinks —
“then the reason for fear does not exist.”

Sharp emphasizes in all his work the need for preparation and care, and he says
that not all nonviolent movements work. Occupy Wall Street did not have a plan, he
says, which was its downfall. “It’s well intentioned,” he says, “but occupying a small
park in downtown New York is pure symbolism. It doesn’t change the distribution of
wealth.”

Above all, Sharp’s work preaches a stern methodology. One cannot enter into a
revolution without thinking it out, without planning, without being strategic. The
Egyptians, in many ways, were successful, he says, because they planned ahead of
time how to get rid of Mubarak. The Tunisians used the Internet for years to
circumvent Ben Ali. Sharp recently wrote a letter to Syrian activists saying, “Think
carefully of what activities will harm your cause.”

When I leave his office after several hours, I am touched by Sharp’s quiet
heroism, his tireless research that earns him little financial reward or public
attention. As Popovic says, “Persistent work, which Gene has committed his life to,
was for decades underestimated by academia, misunderstood by decision makers
and openly attacked by dictators. This is why I am so happy that nonviolent struggle
and people-power are just getting their full affirmation.” Popovic calls 2011 “the
worst year for bad guys ever.”

So what is the legacy of Sharp? Helvey says it is simple.

“One no longer needs bombs, missiles and combat forces to neutralize a

regime’s very sources of power,” he says. “Gene does not say it is an easy option, but
there is a way and it can and has been done. I foresee the day that governments will
examine nonviolent conflict options prior to making decisions to pursue or protect
important and vital interests.”

As I leave, I wonder aloud why Sharp is not working with a huge stipend in a
sleek office a few miles away in Harvard Yard. He explains that financing is hard to
come by — one reason he moved to East Boston a few years ago. “We had no money,”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/t-magazine/gene-sharp-theorist-of-power.html 6/7
21/12/2017 Gene Sharp, Theorist of Power - The New York Times

he says. “A staff of two, boxes in the basement, boxes on the second floor, no one to
help” — he reaches down to pet his dog — “and Sally was no help at all.”

Correction: September 9, 2012

An article this weekend on Page 102 about the American intellectual Gene Sharp refers
incorrectly to his work on a master’s degree. He received his master’s at Ohio State
University in 1951; he was not working on his master’s thesis in New York in 1953. And
because of an editing error, the article also misstates, at one point, part of the name of a
nonprofit organization he founded. As the article correctly notes elsewhere, it is the
Albert Einstein Institution, not Alfred Einstein Institution.
A version of this article appears in print on September 9, 2012, on Page M2102 of T Magazine with the
headline: The Quiet American.

© 2017 The New York Times Company

4 SUBSCRIBE NOW Subscriber login

ARTICLES REMAINING

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/t-magazine/gene-sharp-theorist-of-power.html 7/7