Will Miller
03/31/05
Willard M. "Will" Miller, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Vermont in Burlington and a revolutionary who dedicated his life to the struggle for social justice, passed away on Thursday, March 31 at 11:01am due to complications from cancer. Will tirelessly fought for academic and political freedom, rights of the poor, working class and all inhabitants of the earth who suffer under economic inequities and prejudices.
Will was born in Chicago on August 29, 1940. He was the first child of Lois Nadine Henderson and Willard Marshall Miller. After attending Chicago public schools he joined the U. S. Army Security Agency on his 17th birthday. He worked as a signal analyst with a Top Secret/Code Word Security Clearance to carry out electronic surveillance missions directed at the Soviet, East German and Czechoslovakian forces in Eastern Europe from 1958-1961. This period provided him the significant beginnings of a political education that was not in the foreign policy curriculum in the schools at home. He entered the University of Illinois at Navy Pier based on high school and 1st year of college GED’s, only to be recalled on the first day of classes to active duty for the Berlin Wall Crisis.
After this second tour of duty he returned to the University of Illinois for a BA in Philosophy 1966, MA in Philosophy 1968 and a PhD. In Philosophy in 1969. During those years he worked in housing integration in Champaign-Urbana. He worked on the Ban the Bomb leading to cooptation by the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Will worked with Veterans and students (including the Students for a Democratic Society-SDS) and community groups against the Vietnam War. He subsequently did draft counseling and military assistance. Will joined the Philosophy Department of the University of Vermont in the Fall of1969 as an Assistant Professor—a rank he held for 36 years as the sole survivor of a political purge of nearly the entire department (nine faculty) from 1974 to 1979. Without tenure he too would have been fired. In these 36 years he was faculty advisor to many of the radical student organizations at UVM including the Radical Student Union, Union of Concerned Students, The Gadfly alternative student newspaper, and SPARC (Student Political Awareness and Responsibility Collective). He taught courses on Ancient and Modern Philosophy, Marxism, the Philosophy of Nature, Utopianism, Seminars on Herbert Marcuse, Human Nature and the classic period in American philosophy.
Will continued his activism until his death, and was actively involved with Veterans for Peace (Green Mountain VFP Chapter 57), the Network Opposed to Depleted Uranium Weapons (NO DU Weapons) and was a board member of Global Justice Ecology Project. An informative website concerning Will Miller's professional and political advocacies has been created at www.WillMiller.org, where tributes of his friends and colleagues can be read. Reading many of them before he became too ill to do so, Will commented that it was a great experience to discover that so much of his work was highly valued by some of the most highly esteemed people in his life. A memorial service for Will is planned for Sunday, April 24 at 2pm at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Burlington. Donations may be made to The Will Miller Social Justice Lecture Series, which has been established to sponsor annual lectures in Burlington on subjects close to Will Miller's heart. Checks should be made payable to Ann Lipsitt (write WMSJLF in the memo) and mailed to Ann Lipsitt, 10 Machia Hill Rd., Westford, VT 05494. He is survived by his life-partner and wife, Ann Duchin Lipsitt of Westford and his sister Barbara Knight of Sebastapol, California.
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