Dugger was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 16, 1930. He attended the
University of Texas and was editor of
The Daily Texan 1950–1951. He was the founding editor of
The Texas Observer from 1954 to 1961. Later he served as the ''Observer's'' publisher, spending more than 40 years with the political news magazine. Dugger published hundreds of articles in ''Harper's Magazine
, The Nation
, The New Yorker
, The Atlantic Monthly
, The Progressive'' and other periodicals.
Political involvement In
1952, Dugger, along with
Ralph Yarborough,
John Henry Faulk, and others campaigned against Governor
Allan Shivers, a
Democrat who supported the
Republican Party presidential candidate,
Dwight Eisenhower. Shivers accused Dugger and his friends of being
communists. Dugger criticized
Lyndon B. Johnson and his shift away from the left of the Democratic Party when he came under the influence of
Herman Brown and
George R. Brown. "The alliance (of
Brown & Root and Johnson) became common knowledge as his political identity changed from left to right before everyone's eyes", Dugger said. In
2000, Dugger sought the Green Party's nomination for the U.S. Senate in New York. Dugger used his 2011
George Polk Award acceptance speech to question the
nuclear policy of
mutually assured destruction, saying, "Why are
nuclear weapons called
weapons of mass destruction when morally they are weapons of mass murder?" This continued his long vocal concern about nuclear weapons going back to his questioning of LBJ about how many would be killed in a
nuclear war up to expressing doubts when
President Obama calls for a nuclear-free world.
The Texas Observer Dugger and his friends decided to build
The Texas Observer into an independent liberal weekly paper. He said "I sought to practice journalism according to three basic standards, accuracy, fairness instead of 'objectivity,' and moral seriousness." He went on to mentor and influence progressive Texas journalists
Willie Morris,
Molly Ivins,
Billy Lee Brammer,
Lawrence Goodwyn,
Kaye Northcott, and
Jim Hightower.
Teaching career Dugger taught at the
University of Virginia,
Hampshire College, and the
University of Illinois. He also held fellowships from the
National Endowment for the Humanities, the
Rockefeller Foundation, and the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Later life and death Dugger died of complications from dementia in
Austin, Texas, on May 27, 2025, at the age of 95. ==Selected works==