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Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Smith’s efforts to broaden the role and possibilities of world peace have earned him the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Peace History Society.

Dr. Smith, a professor of physical and health education and history at Queen’s, served as the organization’s president from 1995 to 1997, as well as the secretary treasurer from 1993 to 1995 and from 1998 to 2001.

The Lifetime Achievement Award is handed out every two years by the Peace History Society, and Dr. Smith is the fifth recipient. The award is given to a member who has “contributed outstanding scholarship and exemplary service to peace history.”

For Dr. Smith, the award came “out of the blue” and he says he is “just thrilled” to be honoured alongside colleagues he describes as great historians.

“I wouldn’t consider myself a great historian but I would consider myself a person who cares a good deal about issues of peace and war, violence and inequality, all of those things that are so important today,” he says. “The Peace History Society is doing some great work. I read some wonderful papers. I think the scholarship has gotten better, the questions are getting sharper, more focused and the application of some of the things that they do to the real world is quite clear.”

The Peace History Society encourages, supports, and coordinates scholarly research on peace, nonviolence, and social justice. Founded in 1964, it also communicates the findings of this scholarly work to the general public.  

Educated at the University of California Berkeley (MA’65) and UC Santa Barbara (BA’63, PhD’69), Dr. Smith arrived at Queen’s in 1969, from Macalester College in St. Paul, MN, where he started teaching from 1967.  

At Queen’s Dr. Smith taught courses on Conspiracy and Dissent in American History, US Foreign Relations, Latin American History, the Vietnam War, and American Social and Cultural History. 

In 2004 he received the Frank Knox Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Dr. Smith has written widely on issues related to peace history, gender and US national security in the Cold War, the relocation of Japanese minorities in the US and Canada during Second World War, and American nativism. His 1973 monograph, To Save a Nation: American Extremism, the New Deal and the Coming of World War II, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.