Peter Gabel was born in January 1947. He was the only child of actress and talk show host Arlene Francis and actor and director Martin Gabel. He grew up in New York City, graduated from the Deerfield academy and received his bachelors’ and law degrees from Harvard University. He received a PhD in psychology from the Wright Institute in San Francisco. Peter taught contracts law at Boalt Hall, the law school of the University of California at Berkeley, and also at the University of Minnesota.
Peter was a former president of New College of California, a non-traditional institution based in San Francisco which emerged from the social idealism of the 1960s, where he fostered education directed toward the creation of a more just, sacred, and sustainable world. He was also for more than thirty years a professor at New College’s public-interest law school, where he educated several generations of law students on linking their legal activism with movements for progressive social change. He was a founder of the influential Critical Legal Studies movement in legal scholarship. Peter co-founded PISLAP, the Project for Integrating Spirituality, Law, and Politics. Peter sought to emphasize in all his writings the longing of human beings for authentic mutual recognition and the importance of spiritually-informed social activism in creating a world in which that longing is more fully realized.
Peter served as Editor-at-Large of the progressive Jewish magazine Tikkun since the magazine’s founding by Rabbi Michael Lerner in the mid-1980’s. Peter and Michael had a deep partnership that began during their time studying together in the Wright institute. Peter wrote widely for Tikkun on many issues of the day, often focusing on describing the nature of the social alienation that disables us from fully seeing each other’s true humanity, and addressing ways to heal that divide. His most recent book The Desire for Mutual Recognition: Social Movements and the Dissolution of the False Self, led Cornel West to describe Peter as “one of the grand prophetic voices in our day.”
In addition to his teaching, and writing, Peter has been a community activist throughout his life, always with the aim of putting into practice the kind of spiritually informed social activism envisioned by his writing. Peter was active in his San Francisco neighborhood of Noe Valley, where he sought to “communalize the neighborhood,” as he wrote in a wonderful article in Tikkun Magazine. He was also president of the Arlene Francis Center for Spirit, Art, and Politics in Santa Rosa, a center created in memory of his mother. In whatever he was a part of, Peter was a hands on activist - demonstrating, organizing, making phone calls, doing whatever needed to be done.
Peter had a rich family life in San Francisco, with his partner Lisa Jaicks, union leader and organizer with Unite Here, and his son Sam, a hip hop artist and activist. Peter also played bass guitar with the Central Park Zoo. We have had an outpouring of love and expressions of affection for Peter since his passing. Beyond his many accomplishments, Peter was a deeply caring, ethical, loving, open-hearted, transparent, human being, who lived his values in every way, and treated those whom he encountered with warmth, generosity and care.
The philosophy of PISLAP derives from a vision of the nature of social transformation that originated in Peter’s work and the work of Michael Lerner, expressed in their books and articles, in Tikkun Magazine, and in the Politics of Meaning movement that they initiated in 1996 and is now manifested in the nationwide Network of Spiritual Progressives, and in PISLAP.
PISLAP emerged from a gathering of 1,800 social activists in Washington DC in 1996. This first “Politics of Meaning” conference was an incredibly dynamic and powerful event, showcasing visions of transformation in all sectors of society. There, 50 of us came together seeking to bring this new spiritually-informed vision of social and legal activism into existence. Our PISLAP community has met many times over the years for conferences, retreats, and other types of gatherings. We have had innumerable calls, presentations, and projects. We have also written articles and books, and shared our work and our vision.
In PISLAP we sought to shift lawyering from an activity that can be solitary and competitive to one that was more communal and carried greater opportunities for solidarity. In our vision, lawyering was to be an activity where we could bring our full selves, and law and legal culture would be a central public arena for fostering empathy and understanding through the healing of conflict, and the reawakening of a sense of the sacredness of all human beings and of the natural world. Legal education would have consistently strong ethical content, and would help to humanize both substantive law and the conduct of legal proceedings so as to promote truth-telling, compassion, reconciliation, and responsibility for the well-being of the other, as well as the self. If we had to express in a single sentence the philosophical orientation that guides PISLAP, it would be that legal culture must transform itself to become worthy of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s statement that “Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.” Peter’s leadership and courage in hewing to this vision, his writing developing core concepts, and his warm, embracing presence, have kept our movement growing and expanding.
Peter’s activism stemmed across the culture. He had a strong conviction that without parallel shifts transforming and moving the tectonic plates across all sectors of our society, it is hard to sustain shifts in any one sector of the culture.
Peter was a beautiful spirit filled with love and optimism. He provided us in PISLAP with leadership, inspiration and fresh thinking. He urged us to expand our vision and not be limited to what may appear to be possible. His commitment was to a movement to renew the law infused with heart, and grounded in a commitment to justice and love.
PISLAP is growing in a rich and organic way. We have a network around the world, and have expanded our leadership group. The movement is strong, and we will carry forward Peter’s legacy.
SAN FRANCISCO JANUARY 22, 2023
