John Ellis van Cortland Moon Papers 

These papers are the gift of Dr. Moon. They are housed in our Archvies/Special Collections. Access is by appointment.

Dr. John Ellis van Courtland Moon was born in Geneva, Switzerland of an American father and a Swiss mother.  Dr. Moon was graduated from St. Mark’s School, Southborough, Massachusetts in 1948.  He received his A.B. from Harvard College (History and Literature) in 1952; his M.A. from Columbia University (English and Comparative Literature) in 1953; his Ph.D from Harvard University (American Civilization) in 1968.  His doctoral dissertation was on American strategy in World War II.  He was a teaching fellow at Harvard University.  Dr. Moon has taught at Merrimack College, Boston University and Boston State College.  He is currently Professor of History at Fitchburg State College, Massachusetts, where he teaches American and Far Eastern history.  Dr. Moon was president of the Boston State College faculty during the tumultuous years of the reorganization of public higher education in Massachusetts, an experience which he has chronicled elegiacally in A Memory and A Meaning: Boston State College:  1852 – 1982.  He has also served twice as president of the Massachusetts Conference, American Association of University Professors.  Dr. Moon is the author of “Chemical Weapons and Deterrence: the World War II Experience,” International Security (Spring 1984); “The Hebrew Committee of National Liberation and Chemical Warfare policy,” Simon Wiesenthal Annual (1985: forthcoming).  He is currently engaged upon writing a history of American strategy in World War II with emphasis on the impact of concepts, assumptions and preconceptions upon the planning and execution of policy.

John Ellis v. C. Moon is Professor of History at Fitchburg State College.  He is the author of Confines of Concept: American Strategy in World War II, 2 volumes (New York and London;  Garland, 1988) and numerous articles on chemical warfare policy published in Newsday, International Security, Journal of Strategic Studies and the Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual.  President of the MSCA Chapter at Boston State College during the reorganization crisis of 1980-1982, he has chronicled the demise of that institution in a monograph entitles A Memory and a Meaning:  Boston State College.

Professor Moon is a member of the United States Committee on the Battle of Normandy, Harvard University’s Chemical-Biological Warfare Study Group and the Expert Working Group on Biological and Toxin Weapons Verification, recently established by the Whitehead Institute/MIT and the Federation of American Scientists to advise the State and Defense Departments on ways in which the existing Biological Weapons Convention can be strengthened.  In 1984, he testified (at the Pentagon’s request) in front of the President’s Chemical Warfare Review Commission.

Professor Moon along with Dr. Erhard Geissler recently edited  a book on biological weapons entitled: " Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945." SIPRI 18, Oxford University Press, 1999. A copy is in Special Collections.