H. Bruce Franklin (born February 1934) is an American cultural historian and scholar. He is notable for receiving top awards for his lifetime scholarship in fields as diverse as American studies, science fiction, prison literature and marine ecology. He has written or edited twenty books and three hundred professional articles and participated in making four films. His main areas of academic focus are science fiction, prison literature, environmentalism, the Vietnam War and its aftermath, and American cultural history. He was instrumental in helping to debunk false public speculation that Vietnam was continuing to hold prisoners of war. He helped to establish science fiction writing as a genre worthy of serious academic study. In 2008, the American Studies Association awarded him the Pearson-Bode Prize for Lifetime Achievement in American Studies. A critic of the Vietnam War, he was one of the founding members of the Maoist Revolutionary Union, heading its Palo Alto chapter. After a split within the party, he became the leader of a new organization,Venceremos. Venceremos was a largely Chicano Maoist-Third Worldist organization, which wanted to focus on armed struggle in the present moment rather than accumulating forces. Franklin was fired from Stanford in 1972 for allegedly inciting students to riot in connection with those activities. The termination brought nationwide attention to the issue of academic freedom. Franklin was arrested in December 1972 for harboring Ronald Beaty, a federal fugitive after being freed in October during a prison transfer in which one guard was killed and another wounded. Since 1975, Franklin has been the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. Early years: work, education, marriage and family Born in February 1934, Franklin held numerous jobs in Brooklyn while working his way through college. From 1951 to 1952, he was a batch worker at the Mayfair Photofinishing Company. In 1953, he was an upholsterer for the Carb Manufacturing Company, and in 1954 was promoted to foreman of the shipping department. He graduated from Amherst in 1955, summa cum laude, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 1956, he married Jane Morgan, a graduate of Duke University. They had three children together. From 1955 to 1956, he was a tugboat deckhand and mate for the Pennsylvania RR Marine department, based in Jersey City, New Jersey. h He served in the United States Air Force from 1956 to 1959 as a