Chris Pyle is a teacher, scholar, and political activist whose interests range across history, law, and politics, with an emphasis on civil liberties. He currently teaches courses on constitutional law, civil liberties, American politics, American political thought, and decision making in complex organizations.
Professor Pyle first received national recognition in 1970 when he disclosed the military’s massive surveillance of civilian politics and worked to end it as a consultant to Senator Ervin’s Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, Senator Frank Church’s Select Committee on Intelligence, and the American Civil Liberties Union. These efforts led to his first book, Military Surveillance of Civilian Politics(1986). During the 1970s and 1980s, Pyle was a consultant on privacy issues to Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment and a frequent witness on constitutional issues before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. In 1984 he published The President, Congress, and the Constitution (with Richard Pious), and in 2001 Extradition, Politics, and Human Rights. During the 1990s, Pyle helped his then teenaged sons win a widely acclaimed court case affirming the free speech rights of high school student and in 2009 published Getting Away with Torture: Secret Government, War Crimes, and the Bush Administration. This was followed a year later by The Constitution under Siege (also with Richard Pious).
Professor Pyle has written extensively on freedom of expression, equal protection of the laws, privacy, investigative journalism, terrorism, the detention of persons without trial, the war crimes of the Bush administration, and the failure of the Obama administration, Congress, and the courts to hold the torturers accountable. His writings have appeared in hundreds of newspapers, including The New York Times, the Washington Post,the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times, as well as The Nation, the Washington Monthly, the Civil Liberties Review, Foreign Policy, the American Political Science Review, the Political Science Quarterly, and the Boston University Law Review. He has received fellowships and grants from the Russell Sage and Mellon Foundations, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for the Study of World Politics, the Aspen Institute, and the Fulbright Program
Pyle’s articles on military surveillance of civilian politics won the Polk and Hillman awards for investigative journalism in 1971 and 1972, respectively. In 2004 he received the Luther Knight Mcnair Award from the ACLU of Massachusetts for his contributions to civil liberties as a “teacher, scholar, and model citizen activist.” That same year he was elected chair of the Petra Foundation, a national organization that recognizes and assists “unsung heroes” who make extraordinary contributions to social justice. He is currently a member of the board of directors of the ACLU of Massachusetts.
Pyle has taught intelligence agents in the army; policemen at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice; undergraduates at University College, Dublin; law students at Harvard, and graduate students at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He has taught in Mount Holyoke's Department of Politics since 1976. In 2007, he received the College’s distinguished teaching award.
Between semesters Pyle has taught a variety of short courses, including woodworking (building a boat with students), the Politics of Northern Ireland (taking his students to Belfast during the “troubles”), and colonial history (playing the role of 17th century immigrants, in costume at Plimoth Plantation, in the dead of winter). In 2005, 2007, and 2010, he took students to sea on tall ships (HMS Bounty, Picton Castle, and Brig Niagara) where they worked aloft, set and furled sails, manned the helm, and learned the basic arts of seamanship and navigation.
News Links
- "Professor: New surveillance law insufficient," Office of Communications and Marketing, June 12, 2015
- "Difficult Dialogues: NSA Spying, Civil Liberties," Amherst Media, April 19, 2014
- "Similarities seen in leaks by Snowden, Manning," The Baltimore Sun, June 10, 2013
- "Analysis: US Surveillance Programme Leaks", Al Jazeera, June 10, 2013
- "Professor Pyle on Torture on WAMC," WAMC Radio, March 12, 2010
- "Chris Pyle on Campaign Finance Decision," Office of Communications, January 29, 2010
- "Pyle's Book Reviewed in Palestine Chronicle," The Palestine Chronicle, August 15, 2009
- "Chris Pyle on Torture," Office of Communications, June 5, 2009
- "Christopher Pyle, Whistleblower Who Sparked Church Hearings of 1970s, on Military Spying of Olympia Peace Activists," Democracy Now!, July 29, 2009
- "Obama’s shameful decision on torture," Providence Journal, May 22, 2009
- "Chris Pyle on Closing Gitmo," Office of Communications, April 1, 2009
- "Tuesday's vote to make history," The Republican, November 2, 2008
- "Yurt Construction," Flickr, September 24, 2008
- "Mount Holyoke Prof Attends "War Crimes" Conference," Office of Communications, September 17, 2008
- "MHC's Pyle Redrafts Declaration," Peoples Campaign for a Constitution, July 3, 2008
- "Former Officers Air Military Secrets at Discussion," Daily Hampshire Gazette, April 7, 2008
- "J-Term Adventure: MHC Students at Sea," Office of Communications, December 20, 2007
- "Four MHC Professors Celebrated," Office of Communications, April 27, 2007
- "Christopher Pyle," Office of Communications, April 27, 2007
- "Professor Pyle Interviewed on Secret Wiretaps," Office of Communications, March 29, 2006
- "Pyle in the Sunday Republican: "War on Terrorism Shouldn't Stoop to Torture"," Office of Communications, March 28, 2006
- "McCarthyism - Then and Now" Office of Communications, March 24, 2006
- "Professor Pyle Talks About Government Spying," Office of Communications, March 22, 2006
- "Professor Criticizes Massachusetts's Anti-Terror Efforts," Office of Communications, March 10, 2006
- "Are Terror Suspicions Getting Out of Hand?" Office of Communications, March 10, 2006
- "The Lawless Ask For Our Trust," Office of Communications, March 10, 2006
- "MHC Professor is Talking Head for Domestic Spying Scandal," Office of Communications, February 10, 2006
- "The Lawless Ask For Our Trust," Daily Hampshire Gazette, February 3, 2006
- "Are Terror Suspicions Getting Out of Hand?" Sunday Republican, January 1, 2006
- "Professor Criticizes Massachusetts's Anti-Terror Efforts," Boston Globe, September 26, 2005
- "Ban on Flag-Burning Annual Trivial Pursuit," Sunday Republican, July 10, 2005
- MHC Bounty: A Journey at Sea, Weblog of the January-Term 2005 Course
- "No Mutiny on This Bounty: Students Put to Sea," Office of Communications, January 31, 2005
- "McCarthyism - Then and Now," Address to the American Civil Liberties Union, May 24, 2004
- "War on Terrorism Shouldn't Stoop to Torture," Sunday Republican, February 29, 2004
- "How Immigration Threw A Traveler to the Wolves," San Francisco Chronicle, January 4, 2004
- "For Professor Christopher Pyle, the Patriot Act is Déjà-Vu,"College Street Journal, November 7, 2003
- "Domestic Spying - Again?" Hartford Courant, November 20, 2002
- "Please, No More Domestic Spies!" Providence Journal, August 2, 2002
- "An Army Of Police At Bush's Disposal," Hartford Courant, July 29, 2002
- "Domestic Spying Catches No One," Los Angeles Times, June 9, 2002
- "The Trouble With Tribunals," Daily Hampshire Gazette, May 10, 2002
- "Inventing America: The Perennial Search for a Usable Past,"Speech to the Pilgrim Society of Plymouth, MA, December 21, 2001
- "Tribunal Myths Debunked," Baltimore Sun, Sunday, December 16, 2001
- "Bush Order Removes Basic Rights," Daily Hampshire Gazette, November 22, 2001
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