To the Editor:

Arch Puddington’s excellent article, “Missing Albert Shanker” [July], captured much of the loss felt by many of us who knew and worked with Al. He was a giant of a man. But one aspect of his life was overlooked, namely, his work abroad. He had a passion for democracy and human rights and used his office as president of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) to support dissidents in dictatorial countries and to educate his own union members about the threat posed by Communism and the Soviet Union.

In the late 1980’s, as chairman of the AFL-CIO’s international-affairs department, Shanker was sent to represent the labor federation at two events held in Poland: the commemoration of the deaths of Viktor Alter and Henryk Ehrlich, two leaders of the Jewish socialist Bund who were murdered by Stalin as they fled Hitler’s troops, and the International Human Rights Conference organized by Solidarity. I was privileged to accompany him on both occasions.

The first meeting was organized in the fall of 1988 by Marek Edelman, a veteran of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and a respected elder of Solidarity. He was joined by a number of other Solidarity notables. After the ceremony at Warsaw’s Jewish cemetery, at which Shanker spoke, he went to a post-ceremony gathering. Meeting Edelman properly for the first time, he immediately struck up a conversation in Yiddish. Though he rarely spoke of his own roots in Jewish terms, they were essential to his being.

The International Human Rights Conference, also held in 1988, in nearby Krakow, was the first time democratic activists throughout the Communist bloc (from as far away as Mongolia) came together in the same forum to press for their common agenda for human rights and an end to Communism. It was a remarkable event for anti-Communists, although it was largely ignored in the West. For Shanker, who often said that travel had two aims—shopping and anti-Communism—there was no greater achievement.

He met with dissidents and the leaders of free teachers’ unions to work out how he and the AFT could best help them. But he was even more effective in teaching these union leaders, many of whom would later be thrust into leading positions in their governments, about what worked and what did not work in education, what was still of value in the pragmatic tradition and what had turned out to be just an educational fad, or, worse, a bastardization of democratic principles.

Indeed, Albert Shanker was looked up to more in other countries than here (at least until the last years of his life, when his ideas became the centerpiece of Bill Clinton’s own education program). Over three decades, ministers of education from all continents and from all nations sought meetings with him.

We mourn the passing not only of “old” liberalism’s last lion but also of international labor’s last great statesman.

Eric Chenoweth
Washington, D.C.

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Arch Puddington writes:

My article dealt with Albert Shanker’s career in American education, so I am grateful to Eric Chenoweth for his comments on the vital role Shanker played internationally.

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