David Adams (peace activist)

In 1998 Adams was named director of the unit for the International Year for the Culture of Peace. Along with Enzo Fazzino and a small team, largely volunteer, and with the full assistance of Director-General Federico Mayor, they developed a publicity campaign for the Manifesto 2000. The manifesto had been composed by a team of Nobel Peace Laureates convened by the peace activist Pierre Marchand. The Manifesto 2000 was signed by 75 million people, one percent of planet earth, most of the signatures gathered by the more than a thousand organizations formally engaged by the International Year for the Culture of Peace, making it perhaps the largest such peace initiative in United Nations history.

From 1992 until 2001 Adams worked with UNESCO as counselor, professional and director on the Culture of Peace, leading to the International Year for the Culture of Peace for which he was chair of its Taskforce. Since retiring from UNESCO, he coordinated the midterm and final Reports from the Civil Society for the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World and he has coordinated the Culture of Peace News Network and written books on the culture of war and the culture of peace.

The Culture of Peace was first proposed by Father Felipe Mac Gregor for UNESCO at the 1989 Yamoussoukro Conference on Peace in the Minds of Men where David Adams presented the Seville Statement on Violence When Federico Mayor, a signatory of the Seville Statement, was elected as Director-General of UNESCO, David went to UNESCO in 1992 to publicize the Statement, including a brochure, subtitled, "Preparing the Ground for the Constructing of Peace". Within that context, he worked with Director-General Mayor, Georges Kutukdjian and Ambassador Ahmed Sayyad to propose the Culture of Peace Programme. In 1994, he left his University Post in order to establish the UNESCO Culture of Peace Programme under Director-General Mayor and Director Leslie Atherley, and along with Firmin Edouard Matoko. From 1993 until 1996 he worked on the establishment of national culture of peace programs, including those of El Salvador and Mozambique. In 1995 he prepared a book for UNESCO entitled UNESCO and a Culture of Peace: Promoting a Global Movement.

Concerned about mass media claims of a biological basis for war, he worked with the International Society for Research on Aggression to initiate a process leading to the Seville Statement on Violence which showed scientifically that war is not biologically determined and, to quote Margaret Mead, "the same species that invented war is capable of inventing peace." He was responsible for the newsletter of the Seville Statement from 1986 to 1994, a history of its origins and effects, as well as a study showing that if one believes that war is not biologically determined, one is more likely to work for peace.

As an activist against the war in Vietnam, Adams was an editor of the newspaper Modern Times (1970-1976). Later. as an activist in the Nuclear Freeze movement, he was one of the organizers of the Peoples Peace Appeal (1986-1987) which obtained hundreds of thousands of signatures in the United States and millions in the Soviet Union in an effort to end the Cold War ..

David Adams went to Columbia University from 1957 to 1962 where he studied literature and wrote novels (Master of the House and Peace) and poetry ("Page Poems"). He obtained his doctorate in psychology at Yale University 1962–1968 with a dissertation later published in Science Magazine as "Cells Related to Fighting Behavior Recorded from Midbrain Central Gray Neuropil of Cat". Then, as Assistant, Associate and Full Professor at Wesleyan University, Adams continued working on the brain mechanisms of aggression, and initiated studies which would underlie the concept of the Culture of Peace.

David Adams (born 1939) is an American peace activist, scientist, scholar, writer and journalist. As a Professor at Wesleyan University he ran a brain research laboratory and published many scientific articles. Adams then served at UNESCO, where he worked on the Culture of Peace initiative that eventually led to the International Year for the Culture of Peace.