Ian Williams a history.

 

Brought up in Liverpool just as the Beatles were launching, his youth club turned the group down because they wanted 40 quid for a gig, and got the Searchers for 20 instead. he was thrown out of Liverpool University which suspended him because he and colleagues occupied the Senate House over its investments in Apartheid South Africa. He worked on Liverpool buses and was in China during the Cultural Revolution, in 1971, where he had a drinking competition with Premier Chou En Lai and the "Gang of Four" and argued English Literature with Jiang Jing, also known as Madame Mao. He worked on the buses and trains, and eventually became a full time labor union official until the early eighties, when he moved into full time writing after winning a Nuffield Fellowship to study Indian unions in 1984. In 1987 he was a speech-writer for UK Labour party leader Neil Kinnock during the elections. (Joe Biden's presidential ambitions were derailed when it was revealed that he had plagiarized a Kinnock speech). In 1989 he moved to New York, where he still lives. 

His interests include science, politics, science fiction, history and the role of alcohol, on all of which he has written essays and reviews for journals ranging from the Common Review (published by the Great Books Foundation, Chicago) to the London Review of Books, World Policy, the Nation and the New Statesman on George Orwell, late Roman history, and poetry, a former drama critic for The Independent, and contributor to Plays and Players.  He has contributed to media across the world, from Punch to the Jordan Times to the South China Morning Post, Asia Times, and the Australian.

He was twice President and twice Vice President of the United Nations Correspondents Association. He speaks on international affairs and American foreign policy at venues across the world, such as the UN University in Tokyo, Yale, Columbia, NYU, Freedom Forum, and Rutgers, Al Maty Kazakh University, Fukuoka University Japan. In addition to writing, he has worked in various capacities for many TV and radio outlets, ABC, CBC, CNN, BBC, ITN CNBC etc. He has appeared on Good Morning America, the O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, Wolf Blitzer, Neil Cavuto, etc. In 1995 a CBC programme investigating CIA influence on UN contracts, for which he was associate producer, won prizes at both the New York and Columbus festivals.

As current President of the Foreign Correspondents Association, Ian Williams moderates their “Outside-In” podcast featuring writers, politicians etc on world affairs and the US economy and politics.

 

 

 

 

 

Books

 

2017 UNtold, OneWorld Press

2017 Political and Cultural Perceptions of George Orwell: British and American Views, MacMillan Palgrave

2015 Tequila: A Global History, Reaktion Press.

2014 Cablestitch biography of Vince Cable the British Liberal/SDP cabinet minister who privatized the Royal Mail.

2005 Perseus Books published Rum, a Social and Sociable History of the Real Spirit of 76, on the forgotten role of rum in world history and the importance of the Caribbean sugar and rum industry to North Atlantic economic and political development.

2004 Deserter: George Bush’s War on Veterans, and His Own Past, Perseus Press

1995 The UN For Beginners,

1989 The Alms Trade, republished in 2008 by Cosimo Books.

 

Other books to which he has contributed include

The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell, Cambridge University Press 2007, George Orwell into the 21st Century- 2004,

The Iraq War, Rick Fawn and Raymond Hinnebusch (eds), 2005

The UN and Iraq

Bosnia, No Peace to Keep.

The UN into the 21 St Century: Wiley, 1995.

 

Selected Academic Articles

World Policy Journal

Vol. 23, No. 4, Winter, 2006/2007 The True UN Scandal:

Vol. 26, No. 2 (Summer, 2009), Nationhood: Ties That Bind, or Free?

Human Rights Review,

Vol 1, 2000 Left Behind, American Socialists, Human Rights and Kosovo

International Journal of Human Rights

6, 1 2002

Righting Past Wrongs: A Review of the International Commission on Intervention after Iraq.

 

Awards

1985 he won the Liverpool Press Club award for “By-line mania” when he wrote the centerfold for the Baptist Times,since then has proved how much he deserved it by writing for Penthouse and Hustler.

1995, New York Film Silver Medal, for CBC Documentary

2010 UNCA Media Award

2009 UN Society of Writers Award.

2012, Founders Award UN Correspondents Association

2019 UNCA Neuffer Investigation Silver Medal Award

He often appears on radio and TV here and abroad trying to explain American foreign policy. In addition to writing, he has worked in various capacities for many TV and radio outlets, ABC, CBC, CNN, BBC, ITN CNBC, Fox, RTE, Arabiya and Al-Jazeera, Russia Today and Press TV, etc. Has appeared on Good Morning America, the O’Reilly Factor, Hardball, Wolf Blitzer, Scarborough Country, Neil Cavuto, BBC’s Newsnight, Panorama etc. etc.

 

Teaching

He has spoken on international affairs and American foreign policy at venues across the world, such as the UN University in Tokyo, Yale, Columbia, NYU, Freedom Forum, Rutgers, Al Maty Kazakh University, the Berlin Literature Festival, and Fukuoka University, Japan. He is a founder and organizer of the Caribbean Media Exchange on Sustainable Tourism.

 

Bard Center for Globalization, he taught a course on the UN and Humanitarian Intervention. He has also taught a graduate writing class at NYU and undergraduate English to Boricua College before joining CUNY/BMCC as an adjunct in 2019 where he still teaches English Literature and Composition.