Paul Goodman (1911-1972)
Goodman was a pacifist and anarchist whose beliefs, expressed in prose, poetry, and social criticism, helped shape the doctrine of the New Left of the 1960s. Committed to personal and sexual freedom, he believed that society's institutions inhibited innate human creativity, caring, and nonviolence. His writings covered a wide range of topics- education, city planning, psychotherapy, and literary criticism- reflecting some of the varied careers he had while continuing to work for social change. During the Indochina War, Paul Goodman was a staunch supporter of the Resistance to the Draft movement and its participants, and an articulate proponent of a mass-based nonviolent movement against the War.