September 19, 2024
The Program on Science and Global Security held the Bruce Blair Memorial Lecture 2024 on 19 September at Princeton University.
The Memorial Lecture, which was inaugurated in 2023, honors the life and work of Bruce Blair (1947-2020), who joined SGS in 2013 as a research scholar and passed away in July 2020. The lecture series aims to advance understanding of the risks of nuclear weapons and foster policies to end them.
The 2024 Lecture was the first in a series of events marking the 50th year of the Program. The Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), Amaney Jamal, made the welcome remarks and celebrated the work of the Program.
The Lecture was a panel discussion hosted by Zia Mian, co-chair of the Program. Video of the panel is available here. It featured:
Eric Schlosser ’81, the author of Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (2013), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. It tells the story of America’s effort to prevent its nuclear weapons from being stolen, sabotaged, or detonated by accident.
Annie Jacobsen ’89, the author of Nuclear War: A Scenario (2024), a widely acclaimed best-seller. It offers a minute-by-minute description of the start and escalation of a nuclear war and the catastrophic long-term global consequences.
Smriti Keshari, a filmmaker and artist with residencies at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY, and at the National Theatre in London. She was a TED Prize finalist and one of Foreign Policy’s Global Creative Thinkers for 2016.
Eric Schlosser and Smriti Keshari are the creators of the multimedia art installation the bomb that is featured in the special exhibition “Close Encounters: Facing the Bomb in a New Nuclear Age,” marking 50 years of the Program. The exhibition is on display at SPIA’s Bernstein Gallery from 19 September to 25 October 2024. After its premiere at Princeton, parts of the exhibition will go on an international university tour.
The Bruce Blair Memorial Lecture series is made possible by generous support from Sally Blair and the Blair family, Robert and Ellie Meyers, and John and Jessica Fullerton.
The Bruce Blair Memorial Fund at Princeton University supports work at SGS on nuclear arms control, non-proliferation, and disarmament.
SGS is developing the Bruce G. Blair Archive as a resource for scholars, students, activists, and policy makers. A distinguished scholar and a leader of the global nuclear disarmament movement, Blair demonstrated over his forty years of research and writing and policy engagement, that nuclear weapon risks were far greater than understood or imagined leaders or publics. His work enabled and informed many policy debates on these dangers and proposals to address them.