Farewell to AIUSA Executive Director Bill Schulz
Bill Schulz took the helm when AIUSA was at a crossroads. Twelve years later, a strengthened organization prepares for its next transition, and Schulz considers life after Amnesty.
By Mohan Seneviratne
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When Dr. William F. Schulz became executive director of Amnesty International USA in April 1994, he assumed leadership of an organization struggling to define itself in a changing world. Images of Chinese students protesting in Tiananmen Square and the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had inspired human rights activists across America. The ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and the genocide of an estimated 1 million Tutsi and moderate Hutus in Rwanda had appalled them. But AIUSA was not in prime form to help realize human rights gains following these developments. Membership had begun to decline after considerable growth in the 1980s. Fundraising had leveled off. The organization was divided about how best to combine grassroots leadership with staff and volunteer expertise.
The largest national section of one of the world's most pre-eminent human rights organizations was at a crossroads. AIUSA needed more than a strong new director with a commitment to social justice. It needed a visionary with the expertise in organizational growth, management, fundraising and public relations to rebuild its foundation. And it needed an inspirational leader who would build bridges and heal wounds. Schulz, then the president of the Unitarian Universalist Association and a former minister, was well-prepared to take AIUSA forward.
Schulz admits bridging the organizational divide was a major early challenge. "Being responsive to staff needs that are often very diverse, hearing all the members pushing Amnesty in different directions, and then trying to balance them with the international movement's own needs and priorities is always a complex challenge," he says. "I was surprised there was as much tension between staff and volunteers as I found when I got here. So I tried to be a bridge-builder ... to not take a radical position. I think everyone, no matter what their perspective on the organizational issues, was deeply committed to the human rights agenda. Calling people back to that agenda and reminding them why we were all in this together was very important."
After an initial tour of AIUSA, Schulz decided quickly to build a staff of some of the most talented individuals in the human rights field and a dynamic senior management team. He also prioritized dramatically increasing revenues. "I knew no matter what else we did right, if we didn't have enough money the organization would be at odds with itself ... constantly fighting about financial priorities" and diminishing its capacity to fulfill its core mission.
Schulz's strategies worked. Since 1994 the staff has grown from 80 to 160. Many are experts in their fields. Between 1996 and 2005 the dues-paying membership grew by nearly 30 percent. The organization has doubled its budget to $42 million. Gifts of $5,000 or more have grown from a total of $500,000 a year to more than $5 million a year. This enormous increase in major gift-giving has provided a base for AIUSA's first comprehensive capital campaign, now in Phase 1, and supported the development of AIUSA's Web site, whose online community now exceeds 400,000 individuals.
"Bill has been an incredibly intense, creative and inspired leader and a very successful fundraiser," says Paul Hoffman, a civil rights attorney in California and former chair of AI's International Executive Committee. "The work he has done will leave the organization on firm financial footing for many years to come."
Schulz also recognized that grassroots activism must retain a place at the heart of an organization built by volunteers. So to expand and support an active, vibrant and diverse membership base, AIUSA created the Activist Growth and Development Blueprint in 2003. Under Schulz's direction in 2005, the organization sharpened its focus on activist development and created the National Training Program and the National Student and Youth Program, to better prepare members to campaign and to enlist and serve young members, some of AIUSA's most dedicated activists. The stronger membership networks lend force to AIUSA's work to secure the release of prisoners of conscience and advance the larger human rights agenda around the world.
Under Schulz's leadership, an invigorated AIUSA has expanded its work via new programs, including OUTfront! for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender human rights; a Research Department to conduct field research on domestic human rights issues; the Business and Human Rights program to work on corporate responsibility; the Crisis Preparedness and Response Unit to mobilize the organization on rapidly unfolding and grave human rights situations; the Domestic Human Rights Program to focus on U.S. abuses; and Artists for Amnesty to engage members of the creative community such as actors Mira Sorvino, Halle Berry and Nicolas Cage. Post-September 11, Schulz has increased resources to address violations in the U.S.-led "war on terror," especially rollbacks on the absolute prohibition on torture.
Cultivating new leadership networks has been a hallmark of Schulz's tenure. During his first year with AIUSA he formed the Executive Director's Leadership Council (EDLC), which includes major contributors who meet twice yearly to discuss programs and often take direct action themselves. In 2000 EDLC member Bianca Jagger hand-delivered a letter co-signed by Schulz to the office of then-Texas Governor George W. Bush urging him stop the execution of Gary Graham, whose guilt had come under serious question. "Bill has played an indispensable role personally in developing the EDLC," says Curt Goering, Senior Deputy Executive Director for Policy and Programs at AIUSA. "It's become more than just a collection of individuals, but rather a group with such good rapport it's created its own momentum."
Schulz also played a critical role during the mid-1990s in creating a coalition of the directors of 12 human rights groups. They have come together quarterly, planned collaborative work and met with senior government officials. Schulz "has been in most of these meetings and has been a very articulate and clear voice for holding the line," says Michael Posner, Executive Director of Human Rights First, a coalition member. "The effort to challenge the current administration's detention policies culminating in the [McCain] amendment is one of the biggest successes I can remember. Amnesty is the mother ship. It's the foundation on which the human rights movement has been built. As the leader of AUISA for the last 12 years, Bill has set a very positive tone that encourages human rights organizations to work collaboratively and collectively, which is the way we need to work to make change."
These innovations have put AIUSA in a position to influence domestic policy on human rights. In a 2004 report, AIUSA recommended successfully that law enforcement agencies limit the proliferation of electro- shock weapons such as Tasers, the use of which has too often been a contributing factor in torture and death. The Stop Child Executions! campaign focused attention on capital punishment for juvenile offenders and culminated in 2005 when the Supreme Court declared these executions unconstitutional. And after more than 92,000 Amnesty activists signed a petition calling for President Bush to renew the Violence Against Women Act, he signed its reauthorization into law in January 2006. The act will provide approximately $3.9 billion during the next five years toward the fight against domestic violence in America.
Schulz is savvy about boosting awareness about human rights among the American public. He has published two well-received books and been a strong presence in the U.S. news media, appearing on radio and television programs from Morning Edition and 60 Minutes to Politically Incorrect. "I did so many national media appearances because I wanted to reach beyond the traditional constituency and expand the arena of people who thought about and talked about human rights," he says. As a result, AIUSA is now routinely cited in major news media outlets. And according to Edelman Public Relations' 2006 Trust Barometer, in which 1,500 opinion leaders were surveyed, AI is now one of the most trusted NGOs in the country. The New York Review of Books said of Schulz in 2002 that he has "done more than anyone in the American human rights movement to make human rights issues known in the United States."
Schulz himself is modest in his assessment of all he has accomplished for AIUSA through staff development, fundraising, membership support, program expansion and media exposure. When he speaks before crowds of members and volunteers at events across the country, however, his oratorical zeal is in effect. Darcie Olson, an activist from Costa Mesa, Calif., remembers well his appearance at the Western Region conference in Salt Lake City, shortly after the 2004 presidential election. "He gave such an inspirational speech when so many of us were down," she says. "He reminded us of our long-term vision for the human rights movement and told us not to be discouraged and to keep fighting. It was exactly what we all needed to hear at that moment. A lot of us walked out afterwards just saying 'Wow!'"
"Human rights people are not shrinking violets," Schulz insists, explaining why he has taken on adversaries from Bill O'Reilly to Donald Rumsfeld. "I was trained in debate in high school and can be kind of a combative guy .... We ought not to be afraid to be confrontational, to call people to account, to be very honest and very direct [when] we are dealing with the most extreme circumstances that human beings can face."
His conviction comes in part from his experiences on international missions, during which he has met many who suffer in extreme circumstances. He recalls a mission to Liberia, where he visited with a prisoner "whose body was covered with red dots. I asked him what had happened and he said he had stolen a radio. The police had caught him but instead of just arresting him they had forced him to lie down in a bed of red ants, and he had spent hours with the ants biting him. It was a shocking, dramatic example of how human beings can gratuitously inflict cruelty upon one another."
Schulz has also seen how a heart hardened by sustained conflict can be touched. He remembers meeting David Trimble, the Protestant Prime Minister of Northern Ireland in 1999, after having visited the same day with a Catholic family whose son had been killed by a Protestant mob. "I said, 'Mr. Prime Minister, you are no longer leader of the Ulster Unionist Party. You are the leader of Northern Ireland. Someone has to reach across the divide to people who are not grieving Catholic parents, but simply grieving parents. Wouldn't you like to be the person who did that?' Tears came into his eyes. It was a fascinating moment."
The sum of experiences like these has changed Schulz. "This job has forced me to live in the whole world, not just in a portion of it. [It has] given me the opportunity to act upon my own personal faith that history is not fated or scripted .... We human beings make it for the whole world." It's that awareness and the opportunity to work with people committed to making the world "more tender, more civilized, and more gracious" that Schulz says he has loved most about his job.
Schulz will leave his successor an energized, better-funded and more united organization with new challenges to face. Changes in AI country rules have already freed AIUSA to focus on an array of human rights violations at home. Amnesty International decided in 2003 to step beyond the traditional agenda of civil and political rights and tackle issues of economic, social and cultural rights. "These two changes alone are enormously significant and will be into the future, particularly in shaping Amnesty as an organization," Schulz says. The political climate in the United States could also remain contentious. "Americans who care about human rights are going to have an enormous battle on their hands if those who can without apology oppose prohibition on torture [in the war on terror] remain in power in this country over the long haul."
But Bill Schulz remains optimistic about the future of AIUSA. He looks forward to making way for new leadership, as well as to his own future. "E.B. White said, 'Every morning I awake torn between the need to save the world and the desire to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day.' I've always loved that. I think the first thing I'm going to do after leaving Amnesty is take a little time to savor the world." 