Ferber, Michael, 1944-

Michael Ferber was born in Buffalo, New York, and attended Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where he received his B.A. in Greek Literature in 1966. In the fall of 1967 he helped organize and publicize a ceremony at the Arlington Street Church, Boston, where draft-age men were to turn in their draft cards and pledge to refuse induction and go to prison. That was the strategy proposed by a group of California students calling themselves "The Resistance," whose main spokesperson was David Harris. Ferber gave a short sermon at the ceremony on Oct. 16 ("A Time to Say No") and joined some 200 men who turned over their cards to several dozen ministers and priests; he then took the cards to Washington where they were added to hundreds more from around the country and given to the Attorney General. In January, 1968, Ferber and four others were indicted on charges of criminal conspiracy to aid draft evaders, and he was convicted in June, 1968. A year later, his conviction was overturned on appeal.

Ferber received his doctorate in English at Harvard University in 1975 and taught at Yale University from 1975-1982. He worked at the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy in Washington D.C. from 1983-1987, and joined the English Department of the University of New Hampshire in 1987.