The School of Public and International Affairs, invites you to the Bruce Blair Memorial Lecture 2024 and the opening of a special exhibition at the Bernstein Gallery, featuring “the bomb,” an immersive film, music and art installation created by Eric Schlosser and Smriti Keshari. The lecture and the exhibition are part of a series of events celebrating the program on Science and Global Security’s (SGS) 50th year.

Registration is required for the opening night event, which will feature a discussion hosted by SGS co-chair Zia Mian between panelists:

• Annie Jacobsen ’89 is the author of “Nuclear War: A Scenario,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
• Smriti Keshari is a filmmaker and artist-in-residence at Pioneer Works in New York and the National Theatre in London.
• Eric Schlosser ’81 is the author of “Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

The special exhibition runs Sept. 19 - Oct. 25.

Marking the first stop of a national university tour of “the bomb," the Bernstein Gallery exhibition uses 45 screens to immerse viewers in the story of nuclear weapons, from the first nuclear test and subsequent use against Japan by the United States in 1945, to today’s arms race. Inspired by nuclear weapon command-and-control centers, the bomb’s design evokes the inherent impossibility of ever fully controlling these machines.

The exhibition also includes two short films produced by and for SGS:

“Plan A” is a simulation of escalating war between the United States and Russia. Using realistic nuclear force postures, war plans, targets, and fatality estimates based on data sets of nuclear weapons currently deployed and weapon yields, the work shows the evolution of the nuclear conflict from tactical to strategic to city-destruction phases.

“We Must Speak Boldly” is a reflection on current nuclear dangers and a call from scientists for more education and collective action to help address them. It was produced by the Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction, which was founded at SGS in 2019 and works for fulfillment of the long-standing international obligation to achieve nuclear disarmament.