Thompson Bradley

Bradley Thompson (1934-2019) earned his degrees at Yale University and at Columbia University, including study at the University of Moscow, and served two years in the US Army during the occupation of post war Germany. He went on to become an influential and beloved professor of Russian literature and language at Swarthmore College for over four decades.

His teaching therefore was inseparable from his lifelong commitment to political activism and social justice. He was a leader on campus in mobilizing students and faculty against the Vietnam War, and later US interventions in Central America, Iraq and Afghanistan and remained an active member of Veterans for Peace. He always sought to bridge the divide between the walls of academia and those less privileged, including teaching in prisons over many years.