Organizer Marshall Ganz shows students the power of commitment

By Jennifer Heldt Powell

Special to the Gazette

Marshall Ganz would have been a senior had he returned to Harvard in 1965. But after a summer of fighting for civil rights in the South, he felt he had more important things to do than spend another year in college.

"Why would you want to exchange making history for reading about it?" he says. "That's what we thought we were doing: changing history."

Ganz spent three decades working to change history before returning to Harvard to earn his bachelorÕs degree in 1992. Along the way, he fought for social justice from Mississippi to California, organizing voter registration drives, strikes, and boycotts.

Now, the student has become the teacher. These days, Ganz is an instructor at the Kennedy School of Government and a doctoral candidate in sociology who offers two popular classes on civic engagement. The undergraduates and graduate students in his classes commit several hours a week to projects that include developing youth programs, mobilizing tenants, and cleaning up the environment.

"The things I learned as an organizer have carried into my teaching," Ganz explains. "A class is a learning community, and my job as an instructor is to provide leadership to this community Ñ not to be the answer man."

Ganz spent years experiencing firsthand the lessons he is now passing on to his students.

"A friend of mine once summed it up pretty well when he told me, ÔMost people go to college to prepare for life, but you went to life to prepare for college.Õ "

The Making of an Organizer

Ganz grew up in California, with his father, a rabbi, and his mother, an elementary school teacher, who taught him to act on his moral commitments.

He left for Harvard in 1960, the same year that President John F. Kennedy took office. Ganz took seriously the presidentÕs call for young people to make their world a better place, and the summer after his junior year, he headed for tension-filled Mississippi, where Ku Klux Klansmen had recently murdered three young civil rights workers.

The South was dangerous, but Ganz was convinced that he could make a difference. There was much to do, and when it came time to return to Harvard, he didn't want to leave.

In a letter to the DeanÕs office asking for a leave of absence, Ganz wrote, "The people with whom I have been working have come to know me and to trust me. I cannot let them down by leaving just when violence and terror show signs of increasing. It would be derelict for me to return to Cambridge to study while others are risking their lives to create a new society which is my dream as well as theirs."

Before he left the South, he was arrested seven times, but he left behind numerous new voters. He had also discovered a vocation Ñ organizing.

Ganz returned to California intending to go back to school, but he found another injustice to fight: the mistreatment of migrant workers.

ÒMy experience in the civil rights movement had given me ÔMississippi eyes,Õ which enabled me to see the inequality and injustice all around me that I had grown up with in California, but had not seen before,Ó Ganz explained. ÒWhen I returned home, the opportunity to act on it seemed a continuation of the work I had begun in the South.Ó

Under the tutelage of United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez, Ganz organized strikes and coordinated lettuce and grape boycotts. During his 16 years with the union, he also negotiated contracts and coordinated the unions' voter registration drive for U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign.

He was present the night that Kennedy was assassinated after winning the California primary. Ganz and a group of farm workers heard the senatorÕs speech at the Ambassador Hotel and then followed Kennedy into the kitchen. Suddenly, the crowd froze and people screamed, "He's been shot! he's been shot!"

"The place went berserk," Ganz remembered. "People threw glasses against the wall -- it was like being swept from this moment of victory to a feeling of utter despair."

His experiences as a witness to history, as well as a mobilizer for changing it, help make GanzÕs classes so invigorating.

Returning to Harvard

In 1989, Ganz came back to Harvard for his 25th class reunion and shortly afterward decided to finish his degree. He had been working to revamp the Democratic party in California and felt it was time to reflect on his experiences.

"At first it was very scary, because I was convinced everyone was not only younger but also smarter," he said.

Ganz had little to worry about. He graduated magna cum laude at age 49 and went on to earn his masterÕs degree in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government in 1993. He is now working toward his doctorate through the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

For his dissertation, Ganz is examining how grassroots movements have evolved since the founding of the United States as well as why so many people have become detached from public life, especially politics.

He also wants to give students the leadership tools they need to engage others in acting on their beliefs.

"Many students want to learn not only how to help people who need help,Ó he said, Òbut also how to challenge the system that put them in the position of needing help in the first place."

There is a waiting list for one of his classes, Sociology 96: Community Action Research Project, which is open to only 10 undergraduates. The other, Organizing People, Power and Change, offered through the Kennedy School, has grown each of the three years it has been offered.

His classes attract undergraduates and graduate students from the Kennedy School, the Graduate School of Education, and the Divinity School, but the students are united by their desire to make the world a better place.

"Being in his room is like being in a church," said John Doyle, a 70-year-old Roman Catholic priest who took GanzÕs class last year. "Here are all these people from different backgrounds and different faiths sitting there eager to learn how to bring about meaningful social change. That's heaven to me."

Learning the Craft of Organizing

Students in GanzÕs classes take responsibility for organizing projects, and then learn to use theoretical insights drawn from sociology, psychology, and political science to reflect critically on their projects in writing, class discussion, and presentations.

Ganz stresses that leadership involves more than calling the shots.

"Leadership involves strategizing, motivating, building relationships, and accepting responsibility,Ó he reminded students in May. ÒWork to create a star team, not just star players."

Mary Henderson, a masterÕs degree candidate at the Divinity School, put her classroom lessons to use as chair of the Harvard Unitarian Universalist Ministry for Students.

Faced with having to pull together a group that felt somewhat detached from the organization, Henderson learned how to engage and ÒempowerÓ members by giving them responsibility for the MinistryÕs success.

"In MarshallÕs class, you learn how to motivate people and different ways of relating to people,Ó she said. ÒYou learn how to delegate and get more people involved."

For her project, Graduate School of Education student Andrea Parella worked with classmate Roberta Newman to create an after-school arts programs for parents and children. The plan fizzled because of the difficulty of simultaneously working with a variety of interest groups, including parents, teachers, and administrators. Yet, they considered the effort a success.

"We were learning the craft of organizing, and the focus of the class was to practice what we were learning," Parella said. "I learned a lot from the mistakes I made, as well as the things we did right."

Indeed, Parella and Newman mastered one of Marshall GanzÕs most valuable lessons.

"Learning is about benefiting from the mistakes we make, not about not making mistakes," according to Ganz. "This is something we need to remember throughout our lives."