20th Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future

By Annie Jacobsen

Author of Nuclear War: A Scenario

Wednesday, March 12, 2025
6:00 – 8:00 PM
Music Academy of the West

1070 Fairway Rd, Santa Barbara, CA 93108

The 20th Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future took place on Wednesday, March 12, at 6 p.m. at the Music Academy in Santa Barbara. This year’s lecture was part of the Choose Hope Symposium, co-organized by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF) and Soka Gakkai International (SGI), honoring the late leaders David Krieger and Daisaku Ikeda and their shared vision of a better world. The symposium was held on March 12–13 and explored themes of peace, justice, and global responsibility.

Our distinguished speaker, Annie Jacobsen—a noted author of seven books and a Pulitzer Prize finalist—shared insights from her book Nuclear War: A Scenario. Following Jacobsen’s lecture, a panel of experts responded to her presentation and discussed current challenges and opportunities in nuclear disarmament.

Watch the video below or click here to view on YouTube:

Professor Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London, and co-Director of its Centre of Environmental Justice and Crime, Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute. He directed the project on Global Climate Change, Human Security, and Democracy at UCSB and formerly was the director of the North American group in the World Order Models Project. Between 2008 and 2014, Falk served as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied Palestine. His book, (Re)Imagining Humane Global Governance (2014), proposes a value-oriented assessment of world order and future trends. His most recent books are Power Shift (2016); Revisiting the Vietnam War (2017); and On Nuclear Weapons: Denuclearization, Demilitarization and Disarmament (2019); He is the author or coauthor of other books, including Religion and Humane Global Governance (2001), Explorations at the Edge of Time (1993), Revolutionaries and Functionaries (1988), The Promise of World Order (1988), Indefensible Weapons (with Robert Jay Lifton) (1983), A Study of Future Worlds (1975), and This Endangered Planet (1972). In 2016 he published a book of poems, Waiting for Rainbows. His memoir, Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim was published in 2021 and received an award from Global Policy Institute at Loyala Marymount University as ‘the best book of 2021.’ He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023. Falk’s most recent book, written in collaboration with John Dugard and Michael Lynk is Protecting Human Rights in Occupied Palestine: Working Through the United Nations (2022). Falk is is one of the three convenors of SHAPE, Savid Humanity and Planet Earth initiative, and Senior Vice President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

Professor Jimmy Hara is a Professor of Family Medicine at the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. He is a Professor of Clinical Family Medicine for the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Family Medicine Director Emeritus for the Kaiser Los Angeles Center for Medical Education. Dr. Hara serves as the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF) and as Secretary of the Board of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles (PSR-LA). Together with his family, Dr. Hara participated in the Great Peace March in 1986, walking 3700 miles from Los Angeles to Washington, DC in 8.5 months. Dr. Hara also serves as the Commissioner of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Dr. Ivana Nikolić Hughes is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Chemistry at Columbia University. She holds a BS with Honors from Caltech, where she studied chemical engineering and completed her Senior Thesis with Prof. Frances Arnold, the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Dr. Hughes obtained her PhD from Stanford University, where she was an American Heart Association Predoctoral Fellow. She has been a faculty member at Columbia University since 2008 and was awarded the Lenfest Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award for 2020. Her work on ascertaining the radiological conditions in the Marshall Islands has been covered widely. Dr. Hughes currently serves as a member of the Scientific Advisory Group to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, a committee consisting of 15 experts from around the world who advise the states parties on scientific issues as they pertain to the treaty. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, The Hill, Scientific American, Truthout, Common Dreams, Transcend Media Service, The Diplomat, and elsewhere.

Professor Peter Kuznick, Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, is author of Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists As Political Activists in 1930s America (University of Chicago Press), co-author with Akira Kimura of Rethinking the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Japanese and American Perspectives (Horitsu Bunkasha, 2010), co-author with Yuki Tanaka of Nuclear Power and Hiroshima: The Truth Behind the Peaceful Use of Nuclear Power (Iwanami, 2011), and co-editor with James Gilbert of Rethinking Cold War Culture (Smithsonian Institution Press). A New York native, he received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1984. He was active in the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements and remains active in antiwar and nuclear abolition efforts. In 1995, he founded American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute. In 2003, Kuznick organized a group of scholars, writers, artists, clergy, and activists to protest the Smithsonian’s celebratory display of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum annex. As part of this effort, he cofounded the Committee for a National Discussion of Nuclear History and Current Policy and the Nuclear Education Project with Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba and Professors Mark Selden and John Dower. He co-wrote, with Oliver Stone and Matt Graham, of The Untold History of the United States.

The Honorable Melissa Parke is the Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a role she took up on 1 September 2023. Melissa is a former Australian Minister for International Development and former Member of Parliament for the Australian Labor Party for Fremantle from 2007 to 2016. As an MP, she regularly voiced support for nuclear disarmament, including as a member of a cross-party parliamentary group dedicated to the cause.

She began working on nuclear issues in the 1990s when she joined a campaign to oppose the establishment of a global nuclear waste dump in her home state of Western Australia. Her former constituency of Fremantle is a self-declared “nuclear-free zone” and active member of the Hiroshima-based Mayors for Peace network. Prior to entering the Australian Parliament, Ms Parke served as an international lawyer with the United Nations in Kosovo, Gaza, New York and Lebanon. More recently, she served as a member of the UN Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen. Melissa has a Masters of Law degree in public international law from Murdoch University, as well as law degree from the University of New South Wales and a Bachelor of Business degree from Curtin University.