Date: Thursday, October 9th, 2025
Time: 7:00 - 8:15 pm
Location: William Harkness Hall, Room 119, 100 Wall St, New Haven, CT 06511
Speakers: Dr. Ira Helfand (Back From the Brink; International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons), Dr. Bárbara Cruvinel Santiago (Yale Physics; Berkeley College)
As global tensions evolve, nuclear weapons continue to raise questions of security, peace, and existential risk—concerns that have grown more acute in recent years. This event will: examine why the dangers posed by nuclear weapons are growing and urgent; explore the humanitarian and environmental consequences of nuclear weapons use and the risks embedded in current U.S. nuclear policies and posture; and provide useful information about how Yale students, faculty and staff and the general public can get involved and help reduce these threats.
Opening remarks provided by the Yale Chaplain’s Office. Additional remarks provided by Rishi Gurudevan (Yale College; Students for Nuclear Disarmament) and Cassady Mullaney (Yale Physics; Kimball Smith Series).
Speaker Bios:
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Dr. Ira Helfand is a member of the International Steering Group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. He is the past president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. He is also co-founder of Back from the Brink, a US-based nuclear disarmament campaign.
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Dr. Bárbara Cruvinel Santiago is the John B. Madden Dean of Berkeley College and a Lecturer in Physics at Yale. During her doctoral studies, she became one of the inaugural fellows of the Physicists’ Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction and received the American Physical Society Five Sigma Physicist prize for outstanding advocacy. She later served as a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation, focusing on reducing the risk of nuclear weaponization of dual-purpose scientific research.
Partners:
Yale International Leadership Center · Yale Forum on Religion & Ecology · Yale Chaplain’s Office · Yale Kimball Smith Series · Students for Nuclear Disarmament · Back from the Brink: Bringing Communities Together to Abolish Nuclear Weapons · Yale Department of Physics · Wright Lab