23 Facts About Mark Rudd

Mark William Rudd was born on June 2,1947 and is an American political organizer, mathematics instructor, anti-war activist and counterculture icon who got involved with the Weather Underground in the 1960s.

Mark Rudd went "underground" in 1970, hiding from law enforcement following the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion that killed three of his Weather Underground peers.

Mark Rudd surrendered to authorities in 1977 and served a short jail sentence.

Mark Rudd taught mathematics at Central New Mexico Community College, and retired in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Mark Rudd has since expressed regret for his role in the Weather Underground, and advocates for nonviolence and electoral change.

Mark Rudd's father, Jacob S Rudd, was born Jacob Shmuel Rudnitsky in Stanislower, Poland; he was a former army officer who sold real estate in Maplewood, New Jersey.

Mark Rudd's mother, Bertha Bass, was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the year after her parents emigrated from Lithuania.

Mark Rudd attended Columbia High School in his hometown of Maplewood, New Jersey, and later Columbia University in New York.

Mark Rudd's website says that his commitment to "fighting USimperialism" was inspired by the revolutionary movement in Cuba, which at that time was in its ninth year.

Once he returned from Cuba, Mark Rudd was elected President of the Columbia chapter of SDS.

In 1968, during his junior year, Mark Rudd was expelled from Columbia after a series of sit-ins and riots that disrupted campus life and attracted nationwide attention.

Mark Rudd felt that SDS was not doing enough to protest the war in Vietnam.

Mark Rudd was a leader of the Revolutionary Youth Movement, a faction of SDS, which advocated a more militant course of action while other factions within SDS were becoming concerned about Rudd's increasingly vocal calls for violent confrontation and hardline Communist sentiments.

For seven years Mark Rudd lived underground, although he was disengaged from the WUO for most of that time.

On September 14,1977, Mark Rudd turned himself in to authorities, tired of life as a fugitive.

Mark Rudd had been living and working under an assumed name just a few miles from the Columbia campus in Brooklyn and was increasingly frustrated over his lifestyle which included his inability to see his family as well as working in manual labor jobs beneath his education.

Mark Rudd received a small fine and ultimately spent less than one year in jail for all his crimes.

Mark Rudd regarded this lack of critical attention with some disdain.

Mark Rudd was interviewed for the 2002 documentary, The Weather Underground, in which he stated that although the group's motivations, to end the Vietnam War and to oppose US imperialism, were justified, the violent actions performed in pursuit of those beliefs were questionable.

Mark Rudd was the only former Weather member featured in the film that regretted his involvement in the group.

Mark Rudd travels around the country in support of the newly reborn Students for a Democratic Society.

Mark Rudd recently published another book on his time with SDS and The Weathermen called "Underground: My Life with the SDS and the Weathermen," which was published by Harper Collins in 2009 and is more a personal memoir on his life and times rather than a political statement as was his first book.

In 2008, Mark Rudd spoke about the Vietnam War era activities of SDS and his involvement in them for the award-winning documentary film Superpower by Barbara-Anne Steegmuller.