The virtual seminar will be held from 12:30 to 2:00 p.m. (E.T.)
At this moment, the nuclear weapons threat looms as large as ever, but the issues get relatively little public attention. On occasion over the past almost 80 years, however, nuclear weapons have left the closed circuits of scholars, scientists, and strategists who think about nuclear weapons all the time, but mostly well out of the public eye. When they have made it onto a broader public agenda, it is because of a push by strong social movements that bring fears and threats—and sometimes possible solutions—to the public square, generating attention from policy makers, politicians, artists, and ethicists, among others. Such movements against nuclear weapons are episodic, with peaks in attention and mobilization in response to changes in global politics, technology, and strategy, but also due to persistent and determined work by activists. This presentation explores whether there are lessons to be learned from the long history about public engagement on issues of national security and nuclear weapons that might inform more effective activism in the future. It will look in particular at the strategy of democratizing the politics of nuclear weapons, the experience of how movements have emerged and worked to identify commonalities across campaigns, and highlight claims, tactics, organization, and politics that may matter.
About the speaker: David Meyer is professor of sociology, political science, and urban planning and policy at the University of California, Irvine. He’s written extensively on social movements and social change – his earliest work and recurrent concern is the politics of protest surrounding nuclear weapons. Meyer is author or editor of ten books, including A Winter of Discontent: The Nuclear Freeze and American Politics (1990), and most recently How Social Movements (Sometimes) Matter (2021). He is the 2017 recipient of the John D. McCarthy Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Scholarship of Social Movements and Collective Behavior. This presentation draws on a paper for the February 2024 workshop “Finding Effective Strategies To Advocate For Peace And Nuclear Security: Mining the Past to Inform the Future” at the Jack W. Peltason Center for the Study of Democracy, University of California Irvine. .