19th Annual Kelly Lecture on Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

Dr. Ivana Nikolić Hughes, delivering the 19th Annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future at the Music Academy in Santa Barbara.

Dr. Ivana N. Hughes, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF) and a Senior Lecturer at Columbia University, presented NAPF’s 19th Annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future on Thursday, May 25, 2023 in Yzurdiaga Hall at the Music Academy in Santa Barbara.

In her lecture, entitled Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future, Dr. Hughes examined, (1) the hidden histories of nuclear weapons use in Japan and of nuclear testing around the world, (2) the present day environmental conditions in the Marshall Islands and other consequences of the US nuclear tests there, and (3) two versions of the future, one in which nuclear war causes nuclear winter and end of human civilization as we know it, and one in which the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) achieves its objective of a nuclear-weapons free world. Although uncomfortable and even scarry at times, the lecture is ultimately a hopeful take on nuclear abolition and the importance of the TPNW for getting humanity to a world free of nuclear weapons.

The Annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future was established by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in 2001. Past lecturers include Christine Ahn, Helen Caldicott, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Dennis Kucinich, Peter Kuznick, Elaine Scarry, and Oliver Stone, to name just a few.

You can watch the lecture here: