CONTACT: Lisa Lacher, 515-271-3119, lisa.lacher@drake.edu
Joseph Gerson, a nuclear specialist and peace campaigner, will speak at Drake University Tuesday, May 1, on “Abolition or Global Proliferation: What to Make of Iranian and U.S. Nuclear Programs and Policies.” The speech, which is free and open to the public, will start at 7 p.m. in Bulldog Theater in Olmsted Center, 29th Street and University Avenue.
Gerson, the author of “Empire and the Bomb,” is regional director of programs in New England for the American Friends Service Committee, which is co-sponsoring his presentation along with Drake’s Center for Global Citizenship. His other books include “The Sun Never Sets…Confronting the Network of Foreign U.S. Military Bases” and “With Hiroshima Eyes: Atomic War, Nuclear Extortion and Moral Imagination.”
Gerson has been involved in the U.S. justice and peace movements since the mid-1960s. His work with AFSC has included helping to launch the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s, preventing New England harbors from being transformed into nuclear weapons bases, helping to build the U.S. and global anti-bases and nuclear weapons abolition movements and helping to create peace and anti-war coalitions.
His recent work has focused on education, organizing and mobilization to end the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq, preventing nuclear war and advancing the struggle for nuclear weapons abolition, the establishing of the global “No Bases Network” and peaceful resolution of the nuclear confrontations the United States faces with Iran and North Korea.
For more information about Gerson’s presentation at Drake, call 515-271-2117.