(1867-1961)
Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946. Emily Balch was born into a prosperous Boston family on January 8, 1867. She was a member of the first graduating class at Bryn Mawr College and continued her studies in sociology and economics at Harvard, as well as in Paris, Chicago, and Berlin. Her active involvement in social reform led to her friendship and collaboration with Jane Addams. Balch’s concern for the plight of Slavic immigrants to the United States led to her 1910 study, Our Slavic Fellow Citizens. She became a full professor at Wellesley College in 1913 and chair of its Department of Sociology and Economics. Although she had devoted herself intellectually and practically to issues of social justice and women’s rights, with the outbreak of World War I, Balch decided that her prime work in life would be the promotion of peace. She was as devoted to this cause as she had been to social reform—to the detriment of her personal life. She served as a delegate to the International Congress of Women at the Hague in 1915 and was a founder of the Women’s International Committee for Permanent Peace, which became the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). She participated in the Neutral Conference for Continuous Mediation in Stockholm sponsored by Henry Ford. She spoke and wrote opposing entry into the war by the United States. Because of her peace activity, Wellesley’s board refused to approve additional leave and dismissed her.
Balch attended the 1919 conference of the International Congress of Women in Zurich and agreed to become secretary of its Geneva-based Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). She left that position when the league experienced financial difficulty in 1922 but assumed it again in 1934 for a year and a half without compensation. She was an early critic of the Versailles Treaty that ended World War I. Between the wars, she participated in League of Nations programs related to peace and international cooperation and served on a WILPF commission investigating conditions in Haiti under U.S. occupation. The plight of the victims of Nazism led Balch to alter her pacifism in favor of a forceful defense of human rights. Nevertheless, she continued to emphasize internationalism and cooperation. After receiving the Nobel Prize, which she donated to the WILPF, Balch continued to serve the league in an honorary capacity.
