The state of nuclear weaponry in the world is a frequent topic in the news, with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and President Trump issuing nuclear threats, North Korea building up its nuclear capabilities and the United States launching a 30-year plan to modernize its entire nuclear arsenal, and 122 countries agreeing in 2017 at the United Nations a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
On Monday, Nov. 13 at 4:30 p.m., a panel of experts will discuss “A Perpetual Menace: Nuclear Weapons Today, Tomorrow, Forever?” A reception in the Bernstein Gallery will follow the discussion.
The panel will feature Bruce Blair, a former U.S. nuclear missile launch control officer and winner of the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship for his work on nuclear arms control; Sharon Weiner, associate professor at American University, who held White House responsibility for nuclear weapon budgets during the Obama Administration; and Ambassador Elayne Whyte Gómez, who led the negotiations in 2017 of the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
The panel accompanies a public art exhibition, “Shadows and Ashes: The Peril of Nuclear Weapons,” open to the public in Robertson Hall’s Bernstein Gallery through Feb. 1, 2018. This rich exploration of the implications of nuclear weapons includes multiple components.
Photographer Gary Schoichet provides portraits and reflective comments of Hiroshima survivors, as well as documentary photographs of the effective 1982 Anti-Nuclear Rally in New York, New York. All Souls Church in Washington, D.C., contributes Hiroshima Children’s Drawings in crayon from 1947 by young survivors. In commemoration of the human catastrophe in Japan, multimedia artist Marion Held has made ceramic masks, as well as evocative kimonos of organdy and paper.
In addition, a substantial set of narrative and visual information is presented via unique video and wall displays by the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. These displays provide up-to-date information on the risks from nuclear weapons and nuclear materials, the local and global long-term effects of the use of nuclear weapons, the U.S. nuclear weapons modernization plan and its expected costs, and the current effort to eliminate these weapons, including the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.