Background
Claude Maxwell Stanley was born on June 16,1904 in Corning, Iowa, the United States to Claude Maxwell and Laura Esther (Stephenson).
Claude Maxwell Stanley
1960
The Stanley Center organizes the first Strategy for Peace Conference in Arden House, New York. The annual conference, which continues today, brings experts from civil society, academia, and the private sector together with government officials to analyze key global challenges and search for policy solutions. The first conference, co-organized by business entrepreneur and world peace advocate Tom Slick, included the participation of Nobel Peace Prize winner Philip Noel-Baker. Ideas that originated at the conference influenced the creation of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in 1961.
1965
The Stanley Center holds the first annual United Nations of the Next Decade conference in Menlo Park, California. In nearby San Francisco, delegates from 114 countries meet to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations with a symbolic session. Recommendations from the Stanley Center conference - attended by academics and government officials focused on what role the United Nations should play in the coming years, as well as the changes needed to make the body more effective - are presented to the United Nations. This week-long conference is held annually through 2008.
1979
Max Stanley publishes Managing Global Problems, a book focused on approaches, procedures, and mechanisms for managing global problems more effectively. It shows an evolution in Stanley’s thinking since publishing Waging Peace in 1956. While he was in favor of maintaining a strong military in 1956 as a deterrent, by 1979 Stanley was a greater champion of arms control, especially after visiting Hiroshima and seeing firsthand the devastation caused by nuclear weapons. Stanley also saw new challenges, such as broadening economic and social development in the Global South, stabilizing population growth, protecting the environment, and extending human rights to all.
1956
Claude Maxwell "Max" Stanley and his wife Elizabeth M. "Betty" Stanley establish the Stanley Center with a vision of promoting "a secure peace with freedom and justice." Though originally established as a conduit for charitable giving, the center soon expanded to become a mission-focused organization dedicated to research and education in international relations.
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1979
Claude Maxwell Stanley was born on June 16,1904 in Corning, Iowa, the United States to Claude Maxwell and Laura Esther (Stephenson).
Claude Stanley graduated from Corning High School in 1922. He earned a Bachelor of Science (1926) and a Master of Science (1930) in engineering from the University of Iowa.
In 1939, in partnership with his younger brother Art, Stanley bought a small Muscatine engineering firm called Central States Engineering, which eventually became Stanley Consultants, Inc. The firm specialized in rural electrification, state highway construction, flood control, and municipal water and sanitary system projects.
After the war, Stanley Consultants, Inc. returned to electrical plant and other construction projects in both the United States and overseas and prospered in the postwar boom. In 1972 Stanley retired as president of the firm.
In 1943 Stanley, with two partners, formed a company to manufacture steel cabinets for the kitchens of the new homes they knew would be built after the war. This new company was to be called Home-O-Nize (a play on "harmonize"). After the war and a change of name to HON Industries and a change of products to office equipment, the company prospered. HON is now the third-largest office equipment manufacturer in the United States. Stanley retired from the presidency of HON in 1964.
In 1947 Stanley joined the organization that would eventually become the United World Federalists (UWF), an organization whose goal was to foster world law, stability, and peace by strengthening the United Nations (UN) through modifications to its charter. Stanley was very active in the organization and served as U.S. president (1954- 1956 and 1964-1966) and world president (1958-1965).
In 1956 Stanley and his wife, Elizabeth, created and endowed the Stanley Foundation, headquartered in Muscatine. The foundation focuses on "the promotion of public understanding, constructive dialog and cooperative action on critical international issues."The foundation's activities include publishing special studies on global issues and periodically publishing a journal of thought and dialogue on world affairs.
Politically, Claude Stanley would have described himself as a business Republican with an Iowa Republican heritage, but he would have also called himself a progressive, internationalist Republican. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the progressive Eisenhower but slowly became disenchanted with conservative Republicans and did not support Goldwater in 1964. Claude Stanley voted for Carter in 1976 and actively worked against Reagan in 1980.
Near the end of his life, Claude Stanley summarized his worldview in a speech given at the University of Dubuque. He stated that the major world problems stemmed from and included an inequitable economic order with inadequate trade relationships between the developed and developing nations, the slow social and economic development of the developing nations, the imbalance of world population growth, and the depletion of the supporting world resources.
Claude Stanley was one of the College of Engineering's most outstanding graduates and extensively supported The University of Iowa, including the donation of over $2 million and a major art collection to the UI Foundation after his death in 1984.
In 1927 Claude Stanley married Elizabeth M. Holthus. They had three children.
