Gertrude C. Bussey

Gertrude Carman Bussey (January 13, 1888 – March 12, 1961) was an American academic philosopher and activist for women's rights, civil liberties, and peace.

Education and academic career Gertrude Bussey, the daughter of Grace Fletcher Bussey and lawyer William George Bussey, was privately educated at several New York preparatory schools.

Bussey first attended Barnard College before graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1908 from Wellesley College. After graduate study at Columbia University in 1908-1909 and teaching at a private school in Bronxville she went on to do further study at Oxford University during 1912-14. She then went to Northwestern University and became, in 1915, its first student to receive a PhD in philosophy. That same year, she was appointed as an instructor of philosophy at Goucher College. She was promoted to full professor in 1921, and became chair of the philosophy department in 1924, a position she held until her retirement in 1953. In 1954, she received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (LHD) from the college. It was reprinted in 1927 and 1943. This was the only available English translation of La Mettrie made since 1750 and no newer English translation was made available until 1994. Her PhD dissertation, Typical Recent Conceptions of Freedom, of which several chapters were previously published in The Philosophical Review and The Monist, was published in 1917. In the same she discusses various then contemporary naturalistic conceptions of freedom and determinism related to the issue of free will including those of Ernst Haeckel, William James, Henri Bergson and Bernard Bosanquet. and was involved with numerous progressive social and political causes. She was, along with Elisabeth Gilman, a co-founder and leader of the Maryland Civil Liberties Committee, which was formed in 1921 in the wake of arrests and deportations of immigrant workers and was later to become a branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. She was also involved with the Baltimore Open Forum, the Consumers' League of Maryland, the Baltimore YMCA, and the Church League for Industrial Democracy. Bussey served as National President of WILPF from May 1939 but as she did not always endorse strict pacifism she resigned her position in 1941 "so a more appropriate leader could take over." She did however remain active within WILPF and was elected to the international executive committee as a joint chair in 1946. She also served as Honorary National President from 1960 to 1961.

Bussey died before she could complete her projected 50-year history on the WILPF. It was, however, completed by Margaret Tims and published posthumously as Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915-1965: A Record of Fifty Years Work'''(1965).

Legacy Following Bussey's death on March 13, 1961, aged 73, which was marked by an obituary in The New York Times, a lectureship was founded in her honor at Goucher College "by the American Civil Liberties Union, the class of 1929 of Goucher, of which she was an honorary member, and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom". trans, Man a Machine, by Julien Offroy de la Mende Open Court Publishing Co., Chicago. 1912 "Dr. Bosanquet's Doctrine of Freedom" The Philosophical Review 25 (1916): 711-19, 728-30. "Criticisms and Discussions: Mechanism and the Problem of Freedom" The Monist Vol. 27, No. 2 (APRIL, 1917), pp. 295-306 Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. 1915-1965: A Record of Fifty Years' Work, with Margaret Tims (Allen & Unwin, London, 1965). 1980 Reissue: Aiden Press as Pioneers for Peace: Women's International League for Peace and Freedom 1915-1965.