Franz Schurmann, the foremost scholar of communist China during the Cold War, an early opponent of the U.S. war in Indochina, and the co-founder of Pacific News Service, died at his home in San Francisco on Aug. 20. The cause was advanced Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. He was 84.

Schurmann taught history and sociology at UC Berkeley for 38 years. Nevertheless, he chafed against the confines of the academy, and preferred to describe himself as an explorer-journalist rather than as an academic. He was fluent in 12 languages.

His first great exploration was a trip on horseback through Afghanistan in the late 1950s—a journey of two years that led Schurmann to discover what, until then, had been considered by anthropologists a mythical tribe of blue-eyed, blond-haired Mongols who descended from the military expeditions of Genghis Khan. ("The Mongols of Afghanistan," 1962)

In contrast to the Cold War polemics that dominated China studies in the United States, "Organization and Ideology of Communist China" (1968) drew heavily on Schurmann’s interviews of Chinese refugees in Hong Kong—interviews that enabled him to convey to Western readers how Chinese society and governance truly worked.

Schurmann’s knowledge of the histories and cultures of the Far East gave him an expertise within the anti-war movement that few other critics of American foreign policies of the time commanded. In 1966, he coauthored, with Reginald Zelnik and Peter Dale Scott, "The Politics of Escalation in Vietnam," documenting a parallel chain of command operating within the U.S. military and intelligence agencies that intended to thwart White House diplomacy.

An inveterate reader of the world press, Schurmann often told the story of a great World War II spy whose primary sources were daily newspapers. Schurmann tracked the rise of the post-Cold War global economy in "The Logic of World Power" (1974) and went on to challenge the almost universal demonization of Richard Nixon by America’s intelligentsia with "The Foreign Politics of Richard Nixon" (1987).

Despite the acclaim his early writings had achieved, and his reputation as a rigorous if provocative scholar and thinker, no one would publish Schurmann’s Nixon book, until Seymour Martin Lipset intervened on its behalf. Even then, the book—which credited Nixon rather than Kissinger with Machiavellian brilliance in creating the architecture of the post-Cold War world-—never won an audience among official Nixon watchers, let alone academics.

Schurmann’s last book, "American Soul," (2001) was a personal narrative, a view of the world from 29th Avenue in San Francisco, at the shore of the Pacific. He described an America that was transforming the world and being transformed by the emergence of a one-world culture and economy.

Schurmann was born on June 21, 1926, in New York City and raised with his younger sister, Dorothy, in Bloomfield, Conn., just outside Hartford. He described his childhood home in "American Soul" as divided by silences that resulted from the meeting of separate cultures. His father—a migrant tool and die maker from Slovenia—had found work in Germany, Poland, Greece and Italy before immigrating to America. His mother fled starvation and the chaos of post–World War I Germany and found work as a housemaid with a German Jewish family in New York.

Schurmann, inheriting his father’s gift for languages, absorbed the languages of the immigrant families of Hartford. He recalled fondly his Italian godmother, his French Canadian friends, and the meals served forth at his “Polish mother’s” table.

A combative misfit at school, he papered his bedroom walls with maps of the world and kept a meticulous stamp collection. His father died when he was 15. He left high school early with a scholarship to Trinity College in Hartford. But he was a working-class commuter student, and he felt out of place.

During World War II, he was drafted and assigned to language school. While waiting in line to get his papers, he switched places with a Japanese-American soldier and ended up studying Japanese instead of German. Shipping off from San Francisco, he joined the U.S. occupation forces in Japan, where he worked as a censor in the offices of a Japanese newspaper. He would later recall this as the beginning of his fascination with newspapers.

Thanks to the GI Bill, he entered Harvard after his discharge to pursue a doctorate in Asian studies, without ever having earned an undergraduate degree. While in the army, he formed what would be a lifelong friendship with a fellow draftee, Stefan Brecht, son of the German playwright Bertolt Brecht and the actress Helene Weigel. During summer breaks from Harvard, where the younger Brecht was also a graduate student, the pair would hitchhike to Santa Monica to join the Brecht household. Schurmann’s intellectual life, he later would say, began at the Brechts’ dining room table, in conversation with Thomas Mann and other European intellectuals who had forged an exile colony in and around Hollywood.

For his Harvard Ph.D., Schurmann translated into English the Chinese Mongol dynastic tracts. Schurmann returned to Japan after completing his doctorate to study Chinese agricultural economics for a year at Kyoto University. A two-year fellowship allowed him to pursue his studies of the Mongol tribe in Afghanistan and later to learn Turkish and Persian in Istanbul. He lived for a time in Paris, before returning to the United States and San Francisco, which he remembered from his Army days.

“My life was a series of fortunate accidents,” he would later recall, describing how a visit to UC Berkeley led to an offer by the Department of Oriental Studies to teach Turkish and Persian, filling in for a professor who was on sabbatical. Schurmann subsequently earned a tenured appointment in both sociology and history.

Schurmann’s work on Communist China and the accuracy of his prediction of a Sino-Soviet split prompted offers from RAND and U.S. intelligence agencies. But the growing U.S. involvement in Vietnam caused him to become a critic of U.S. foreign policy.

A founding member of the Faculty Peace Committee at UC Berkeley in the fall of 1964, Schurmann immersed himself in the nascent anti-war and Free Speech movements. He gave—along with anti-war intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, Richard Barnett, Seymour Melman and Richard Falk—an intellectual backbone to the movement. In the spring of 1968, he traveled to Hanoi with Mary McCarthy for a two-week fact-finding trip at the invitation of the North Vietnamese government. Deplaning later in Phnom Penh, Schurmann’s belligerent confrontation with U.S. Ambassador William Sullivan over America’s secret war in Laos earned him headlines at home: “UC Berkeley Professor Squares off with U.S. Ambassador” (TIME magazine). On his return, he was debriefed by Sen. J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “The government is perpetuating so many lies,” Schurmann reported. “I wish it were that simple,” Fulbright responded (according to Schurmann). “The government lies so much it no longer can tell the difference between what’s a lie and what’s the truth.”

To promote independent research and writing, Schurmann founded the nonprofit Bay Area Institute and later, with a former student, Orville Schell, the Pacific News Service (PNS), in 1970. After President Nixon’s breakthrough diplomacy to China and the subsequent end of the Indochina War, Schurmann expanded the scope of his inquiries beyond East Asia to domestic affairs, especially the transformation of American cities with the onset of the global economy. A background session with Huey P. Newton about Newton’s upcoming trip to China led to an intellectual assocation. Schurmann wrote the introduction to Newton’s book, “To Die for the People.”

Schurmann’s devotion to Pacific News Service reflected his passion for newspapers. In 1974, his partner, Sandy Close, a former Hong Kong-based journalist and founder of the Flatlands newspaper in Oakland, Calif., took over the news service. For more than 35 years the couple ran PNS as a shared enterprise.

Schurmann’s columns reflected the range of his inquires. He translated the poetry scrawled by student demonstrators on the walls of Tiananmen Square; he analyzed the manifesto of the Taliban, which he translated from Pashtun long before the group had even surfaced as a political movement of interest to the U.S. press; he warned in 1996 of the spreading of desertification of the globe: “I can taste the sand of the Gobi Desert on the streets of San Francisco.”

A one-time director of the Center for Chinese Studies at UC Berkeley, Schurmann bridled at any official designation of himself as a “China expert”—as if such a designation would proscribe his intellectual freedom.

“I’ve moved on,” he would say, restless as always to resume his intellectual journey—to quantum physics, and then, in the early 1990s, to the study of written Arabic and to Islam. He mastered the script sufficiently to be able to read the Koran and the Arab language press, which became his source of information for hundreds of columns, tracking the spread of militant Islam and America’s deepening engagement with the Muslim world.

Schurmann retired from UC Berkeley in the mid-1990s, a move he believed would free him to travel and to write. Stung by the rejection of his writing on Nixon by the East Coast publishing world, he slowly cut his ties to academia and many intellectual circles. Although in the 1960s TIME named him one of America’s 50 most influential thinkers, by the 1990s he returned to his roots—traveling, observing, listening. His late travels took him to Latin America, Africa, India and China. On his last trip to China, Franz was accompanied by his younger son, Peter, and his son’s friend, a fellow New York bike messenger at the time, a young man with bright red hair who towered over everyone they met.

He mentored colleagues at PNS—from noted author and essayist Richard Rodriguez to young writers at YO! and the Beat Within, more than a dozen of whom shared, at various times, the Schurmanns’ home. He served as the intellectual inspiration for the founding of New America Media (NAM)  by his partner, Sandy Close. “Franz was constantly shifting and expanding his lens, drawing on his readings of foreign-language media. PNS would never have made the breakthrough to NAM had it not been for his example,” Close said.

In those same years, not a day passed when he did not walk miles through San Francisco, often walking the eight miles from his home in the Sunset to the PNS offices downtown in less than 90 minutes.

Schurmann gradually withdrew to his study, acquiring an early facility with the computer and masking the onset of Alzheimer’s disease with a prodigious flow of ideas. His last five years were lived in seclusion, though he was visited faithfully by many students and PNS colleagues, even after he could no longer communicate. “This thinker and explorer whose gift was his ability to listen and learn from so many ordinary people all over the world finally retreated to the world of his mind, a universe by itself,” Close said.

Schurmann is survived by Close, his partner of 42 years; his son Mark Anderson Schurmann of Olympia, Washington; his son Peter Leon Schurmann, daughter-in-law Aruna Lee and grandson Leon, all of San Francisco; his sister, Dorothy Schurmann of Oakland; and a godson, Hanif Bey of San Francisco.

A memorial service will be held at the Alumni House in UC Berkeley on a date to be announced.

Visit the Franz Schurmann memorial page on Facebook here »

Pacific News Service/New America Media is the parent news organization that operates the LA Beez hyperlocal news hub.

Ninth District U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker recently deemed Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage in California, unconstitutional.

Kevin E. Stafford had a few words of his own about Walker's recent ruling, calling it "an injustice."

"Most fundamentally, speaking from a perspective of Christianity, Scriptures make it plain the problem with same-sex marriage," says Stafford, who is black and the senior pastor of Zion Baptist Evangelistic Temple in Compton. "The Scriptures make it plain that it is upheld by God that man and woman are to be united... And secondly, I think that once a people has spoken — we are a democratic society — you don't go back and undo what the people have done. We spoke already... What else can be overturned that the people have voted on?"

Rudy Carn doesn't share some of Stafford's views.

"We have a Constitution, and the Constitution says, 'Equal rights for all,' " says the gay black male, who serves as chair of the National Black Gay Men's Advocacy Coalition in Washington, D.C.

Carn says he is glad about the Aug. 4 ruling in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case.

The decision has helped reignite the controversial issue of legalizing gay marriage, leading many Americans — including blacks — to once again discuss, debate, applaud and denounce the concept.

In 2008, same-sex marriage touched nerves in many sectors of society, including among African Americans. The effect partly stemmed from Proposition 8, which amended California's Constitution to define a valid and recognized marriage to be only between a man and woman.

Many blacks balked at or agreed with the argument that fighting for same-sex marriage was the same as advocating for the civil rights of African Americans.

The L.A. Watts Times spoke to several blacks locally and nationally about their reaction to Walker's recent decision, and the reactions indeed run the gamut.

Carn, who also services as chief executive officer if the National AIDS Education & Services for Minorities Inc. in Atlanta, says HIV, poverty and homelessness — at least in his social sphere — trump the issue of gay marriage.

"I think that we (black gay men) have so many issues that we're trying to deal with" that gay marriage is not the priority, he says.

Willis Edwards, who is on the board for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, says Walker's ruling was "fair and just," but he points to another issue that's pressing on the black community.

"People are worried about jobs, brother," says Edwards, a longtime local community activist in Los Angeles. "We have to stay focused on what we need to be doing for our community. People need jobs — people are concerned about surviving.

Sharon Lettman, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, which filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, says gay marriage in the black community shouldn't be significant — in a certain sense. A greater priority is to include lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders (LGBTs) in the black community, says Lettman, whose Washington, D.C.-based organization advocates for the black LGBT community on various issues.

Lettman says blacks in the LGBT community are "overwhelmingly" treated as a "don't-ask-don't-tell community," and there is a lack of acknowledgment and respect for them.

"It's not that it's not important," Lettman says of gay marriage. "It's just the cart before the horse."

Marvin Perkins says he sees Walker's decision as "inconsequential."

"I don't have a lot of feeling about that decision simply because, regardless of what the decision was, it was going to be appealed," says Perkins, who is African American and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

But the issue of gay marriage itself is something he still has feelings about. Perkins says he believes marriage should be between a man and woman, and that children should have a mother and father. Legalizing same-sex marriage allows gay couples to "push their agenda" on everyone else, he says, later adding:

"If we are going to redefine marriage, where does it stop? ... What about the man who wants to marry his sister? What about the man who wants to marry more than one person? ... Where does it end?"

In 2008, Perkins advocated for passing Proposition 8 to ban gay marriages, even speaking on television, but he doesn't plan to participate in any activism this time around.

"Now that that is out of our hands, I'll leave it to those who can decide what to do from here," he says.

Walker's decision means that the case will be heard before the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, and and observers and those in the legal community are anticipating the matter will go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Daria Roithmayr, a University of Southern California law professor, says she expects the Supreme Court to take the case. Walker's decision was so "meticulously written" that it would be very hard to overturn, says Roithmayr, who teaches critical race theory and is an expert on race and gender.

Part of Walker's decision, which is more than 130 pages, states: "California has eliminated all legally-mandated gender roles except the requirement that a marriage consist of one man and one woman ... Proposition 8 thus enshrines in the California Constitution a gender restriction that the evidence shows to be nothing more than an artifact of a foregone notion that men and women fulfill different roles in civic life."

Jim Campbell, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, and a participant in recent case, tells the L.A. Watts Times that the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't hear a case unless it decides to do so, but "one thing's for sure: Whoever loses before the Ninth Circuit (court) will ask the Supreme Court to hear this case."

"This case has just begun," Campbell adds. "In our country, we should respect and uphold the right of the people to make policy choices through the democratic process."

Geoff Kors, executive director for Equality California, said in a recent press release that the recent ruling "affirms that the protections enshrined in our U.S. Constitution apply to all Americans and that our dream of equality and freedom deserves protection. Judge Walker has preserved our democracy by ruling that a majority cannot deny a minority group of fundamental freedoms."

Meanwhile, recent polling data suggest opinions about gay marriage have changed over the past couple of years. According to the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute in Washington, D.C., a recent survey conducted by the organization suggests that a majority of Californians (51 percent) would vote for supporting gay marriage if a similar Proposition 8 vote took place tomorrow.

"Among black Protestants, twice as many report becoming more supportive as report becoming more opposed (27% vs. 13%)," according to the institute's report, titled "Religion and Same-sex Marriage in California: A New Look at Attitudes and Values Two Years after Proposition 8."

When it comes to Hosea Collins' opinion, the question he asks is, "What does my King (God) say about it?

"And my King said that it is not His will; it is not His way," adds Collins, an African American who serves as the youth and young adult pastor of the City of Refuge in Gardena. "And from a practical, natural standpoint, I don't believe that should be done, because the people have spoken. And if we are still a nation that's for the people and by the people, then what the people decide is what's law. So spiritually, it's wrong. And even from a natural, political standpoint, it's still wrong."

Cecil "Chip" Murray, former pastor of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, says he feels Walker made the right decision.

"Beyond a doubt, I think his decision was impeccably correct," says Murray, who is now the John R. Tansey chair in Christian ethics and professor of religion at USC. "It is unconstitutional to segregate against citizens of our nation without just cause."

Murray says that public opinion in the black community includes strong positions for and against Proposition 8. He says the faith-based community was, by and large, against gay marriage in 2008.

"Our challenge, I think, is to stay open to discussion" and remain civil in the discussion, Murray adds.

Who knows what will happen with gay marriage in California? No one can say for sure, but Murray has a guess:

"My prediction is that in 50 years, we will have an entirely different scenario being played out on the question of homosexuality," Murray says. "They will have won their freedom and their rights."

Related article:
• Proposition 8 Vote Stirs Black-Gay Animosity, Debate

Samuel Richard is Managing Editor at the L.A. Watts Times.

Los Angeles Sentinel Religion Editor Neile Anderson contributed to this report.

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