Ken Carpenter

Ken Carpenter was born in New Mexico, raised in Colorado and lived most of his life in the Southwest. As a student at Colorado State University during the 1960s, he studied history and became active in local civil rights and anti-war efforts. He resisted being drafted to fight in Vietnam and served time in federal prison. On release, he earned a master’s degree at the University of Texas, Austin, worked for LGBT rights and was a full-time peace and human rights advocate in the U.S. and Latin America with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC.) He met Greg Calvert, formerly a radical leader of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and they began a relationship that lasted for thirty years. Ken earned a PhD at the University of Oregon and became a college teacher and administrator, specializing in international education. He and Greg established and ran an international educational exchange center and a school program for disadvantaged children in Granada, Nicaragua. Now retired from the University of New Mexico, where he directed education abroad programs and taught international studies, peace & justice studies and global & national security studies, Ken lives in Albuquerque teaching, mentoring students, researching and writing. He is working on an upcoming book on the theory and practice of nonviolence.