10 Questions for Jody Williams

My Name Is Jody Williams is a memoir. Why switch from writing about land mines to something so personal?
I think there’s a mythology that if you want to change the world, you have to be sainted, like Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela or Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Ordinary people with lives that go up and down and around in circles can still contribute to change.

What made you, an admitted introvert, become an activist?
I was at university during the time of great social upheaval in the 1960s. But I floundered for another decade until I was given a leaflet that said, “El Salvador: Another Vietnam?” It changed my life. Then, after a decade of working on Central America, I was burned out. I was almost ready to get a straight job. Two people lured me to a meeting about training former Cambodian military land-mine survivors to make prosthetics. I started thinking about land mines as a symbol of the long-term effects of war, and I got excited.

You are American and were honored by the Nobel Committee, along with the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, in 1997, but the U.S. hasn’t signed any ban. Why not?
From what we understand, Bill Clinton backed down to the military. George W. Bush had unsigned treaties, so we had no expectation that he’d sign [ours]. Now the U.S. is obeying the treaty, so why not sign it and look like we believe in multilateralism, as Barack Obama talked about in his 2008 campaign? We’ll see.

How are female activists different from male activists?
Shirin Ebadi, who received the Peace Prize in 2003, said there are seven women alive who have received the Peace Prize; shouldn’t we try to think about a project we can do together? And the Nobel Women’s Initiative was born. Male Peace Prize winners have never come together to use their access and influence to support building sustainable peace. Get a critical mass of women and it was the first thing we thought of.

You were sexually assaulted in El Salvador in 1989. How did it feel to tell that story?
It was an assault by a member of the Salvadoran death squad to try to scare me into leaving the country. It didn’t work. You know the term dissociation? I do that very well. My brother was born deaf and became a violent schizophrenic in adolescence. I learned to separate my feelings from what’s happening. In the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence, we want to shift the focus to the men who are doing it, not the women who are violated and then revictimized through the stigmatization.

You met your husband in the field. Do you still work together?
We’ve come together to take up the issue of killer robots. Drones are semiautonomous; these are fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon said it would never create weapons without a human being in the loop. But that directive only lasts five years. It’ll be interesting to see how we go forward.

The book seems to suggest that it was difficult to find the right guy. Any dating advice?
He wanted to take me to a fancy restaurant a taxi ride away. I said I wanted to go to the pizzeria down the street. I have to be able to get up and leave when I want to.

So, never go out to dinner farther than you can walk?
That’s how I feel.

What do you think of social-media activism?
I love Facebook. I tweet all the time. But it is not activism. Activism is not pushing a button to sign a petition online.

Didn’t you want to be the Pope when you were little?
I applied. However, I’m married. I’m divorced. I’m heathenish. And I’m a girl. Bad combo.