Kenneth E. Mayers, Ph.D.

After graduating from Princeton in 1958 with a degree in Electrical Engineering, Ken Mayers enjoyed five distinctive careers before retiring in 2018. Having served eight and a half years on active duty, he resigned from his first career as a communications and communications intelligence officer and returned to the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned a doctorate in Political Science. He then taught Political Economy at Bennington College for six years before accepting a position at Digital Equipment Corporation, where he managed the implementation of the company’s first electronic mail system in 1979. In 1992, with Digital in decline, he became an independent process consultant for 8 years and then was hired as the Director of Member Relations at The Appleton Group, a leader in the field of professional service firm alliances. But the continuing thread to all the years since his resignation from the Marine Corps has been his activism on behalf of peace and justice. For over 35 years he has been a member of Veterans For Peace and as such has been involved and frequently arrested in non-violent direct action protests. It is from this experience and perspective that he can comment on “Protest and the Police.”