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Joe Elder: Madison’s global peacemaker (1930-2025)

By John Nichols, Jan 29, 2025. The Cap Times

Joe Elder, UW professor of sociology, holds a lecture session with students on Sept. 20, 2011. 

Bryce Richter/UW-Madison

Joe Elder, UW professor of sociology, holds a lecture session with students on Sept. 20, 2011. Bryce Richter/UW-Madison

Joe Elder was so unassuming that many Madisonians knew him only as a retired academic, the genial host of United Nations Association dinners, or the white-haired fellow who on Saturday mornings joined his wife Joann at the Farmers Market on the Square to hand out literature for noble groups such as Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays

Yet when he passed away this week at age 94, Elder left a legacy of citizen diplomacy and peacemaking that was nothing short of epic. An internationally respected scholar on South Asia, he joined the UW-Madison faculty in the early 1960s and connected the university to the world as the beloved coordinator of pioneering study-abroad programs and as a brilliant professor of sociology, integrated liberal studies and languages and cultures of Asia. Among other accomplishments, he established a groundbreaking a certificate program for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies.

What truly distinguished Elder, however, was the big picture of the man that was painted by the late Erik Olin Wright, a UW professor of sociology who served as president of the American Sociological Association. “Joe Elder has always been a model for me of how deep moral concerns for peace and social justice can be fully integrated into academic life,” said Wright.

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Northern Spirit Radio interview: Messenger for Peace – September 27, 2009

UW-Madison International Division: Joe Elder looks back at 60-year journey

Oral History Interview: Joseph Elder – 2005,  UW-Madison Oral History Program

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