Glenn D. Paige

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Glenn Durland Paige (June 28, 1929 – January 22, 2017) was an American political scientist known for his work on political leadership, decision-making in international politics, and the idea of nonkilling. He spent most of his career at the University of Hawaiʻi and led the Center for Global Nonkilling.

Early life and career
Paige was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, the son of a YMCA social worker. He grew up in New Hampshire and spent summers in Cape Cod. He served in the U.S. Army from 1948 to 1952 and was a Korean War veteran, working as a communications officer during 1950. He studied at Phillips Exeter Academy, Princeton University (AB in Politics, 1955), Harvard University (AM in East Asian regional studies, 1957), and Northwestern University (PhD in political science, 1959). He taught at Seoul National University (1959–1961) and Princeton University (1961–1967) before joining the University of Hawaiʻi in 1967, where he taught until 1992.

Key ideas and major works
Paige helped found the University of Hawaiʻi Center for Korean Studies in 1972 and played a leading role in establishing the Center for Global Nonkilling, which grew out of the Spark Matsunaga Institute for Peace and its Center for Global Nonviolence Planning Project.

1) The Korean Decision and decision-making in foreign policy
His early work studied how U.S. leaders decided to enter the Korean War. The Korean Decision: June 24–30, 1950 (originally a doctoral dissertation) analyzes the seven crucial days and the roles of key leaders, showing how organizational, informational, and motivational factors shape decisions in crisis moments.

2) The science of political leadership
In The Scientific Study of Political Leadership (1977), Paige proposed a framework for studying leadership in a systematic way. He described six factors that influence leaders: personality, role, organization, tasks, values, and setting. He also connected these to eighteen large political dimensions such as conflict, violence, and compromise, arguing that leadership can be studied scientifically to help solve social problems.

3) Nonkilling and a new field of study
Around 1973–74, Paige experienced a personal shift from supporting war to embracing the idea of "nonkilling"—the absence of killing, the lack of threats to kill, and the conditions that make killing possible. He wrote about this shift and developed nonkilling as a core value and research field. His work led to the book Nonkilling Global Political Science (2002), which argues for measuring and promoting nonkilling through science and education.

Impact and legacy
Paige’s nonkilling work broadened political science to include peace, nonviolence, and ethics. The Center for Global Nonkilling now hosts committees with hundreds of scholars from many universities, and an annual International Nonkilling Day began on June 28 (his birthday) in 2021. His research and mentoring helped advance the study of political leadership alongside other scholars, and his ideas continue to influence approaches to peace and global governance.

Death
Glenn Durland Paige died on January 22, 2017, in Honolulu, Hawaii.