Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

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Introducing our New Associate Director of Development

Introducing Stephanie Somerman, our newest addition to the Center staff who joins the team as the new Associate Director of Development. Meet Stephanie:

While working for two years on the Pentagon Budget Campaign, a project of the Center/Council, and closely with Angela on the Campaign’s steering committee, I am eager to now split my time, lending a hand to the Center/Council development team.  I have sat just down the hall from most of the staff and work closely with Laicie and John on the Pentagon spending issue.  I am looking forward to diving deeper into all areas the Center/Council work on and finding innovative ways to have an impact in the larger peace and security community.  This includes seeking out new sources of funding and different angles we can take, building on the strong foundation of advocacy and policy the Center/Council have built over the past half a century.  Although double duty is tough, I am glad to be able continue to support the Pentagon Budget Campaign coalition in addition to this new role.

I arrived in DC a little over two years ago after 27 months as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine.  Living in southern Ukraine, I worked with two small NGOs to further develop their organizational capacity including writing grants, project design and management plus strategic planning.  My background is in non-profit management with a focus on policy/advocacy based non-profits.  As an alumnus of the University of Michigan and Ford School of Public Policy where I received my Masters in Public Policy, I also ran a small non-profit research firm at the University where I wrote and implemented with a team of students large scale grant projects from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and Census Bureau.  I am also a proud founding member of the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network at the University of Michigan where I worked with my fellow students to write and advocate for student policy solutions to local and federal problems.

With a rich experience in leading, organizing and developing non-profits, I am happy to tackle new challenges.  I hope to take this opportunity to grow my development and operational skills further and build toward a more peaceful national security strategy.

A Note from our New Scoville Fellow, Greg Terryn

Hi,

My name is Greg Terryn and I’m the new Scoville Fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation.  I’m a recent graduate from the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy’s Undergraduate program at the University of Michigan, where my studies focused on international crisis and recovery policy. As the Scoville Fellow, I’ll be assisting in the Center’s advocacy for sensible national security policies, with a primary focus on nuclear threat reduction and nonproliferation. I’ll also be working on U.S. nuclear weapons spending, the 5+1-Iran nuclear negotiations, the Obama administrations nuclear policy legacy, US-Russia relations, and a variety of other international issues relevant to US security.

I’m excited to be working with the talented team at the Center. The sheer volume of knowledge and experience on staff is awe-inspiring and I am thrilled to be learning from the same people whose articles and research I was reading in college. To be working in such a collaborative and passionate community as nuclear policy is rewarding and I look forward to contributing to the collective goal of increased global stability and a more peaceful future.

Greg Terryn

A Note from Our New Communications Associate, Amanda Waldron

Today marks my tenth day as the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation’s newest communications associate, and my eleventh day in Washington, D.C. I haven’t yet had a chance to adjust to the humidity, but I’m already diving head first into managing the Center’s web presence and social media outlets, working collaboratively with the nuclear community, and creating engaging graphics for our issues.

Word around the office is that I have big shoes to fill, but I’m feeling up to the challenge. Last year, as I finished my senior year of college, I served as an intern at Ploughshares Fund in San Francisco. Over the course of my time there, I went from 0 to 60 on nuclear weapons policy and gained broad experience in communications at a national security organization. Most importantly, though, I became addicted to this fulfilling work, and to the everyday gratification that comes with doing one’s part to make the world a safer place.

In June, I graduated with summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors from Santa Clara University in the Bay Area, where I studied political science, French, and history. I also have a particular issue area of interest, having written my 60-page honors thesis on changes in Iran’s foreign policy since 1979.

Just two weeks ago, I jumped at the amazing opportunity to join the Center. I have so much to learn from Center staff, board, and the security community at large here in D.C. I’m thrilled to be a part of this impressive team and to contribute to the Council and Center’s tremendous work.

I look forward to working with you all.

Get to know our new fall interns!

The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation is pleased to welcome Katie McCarthy and Sarah Tully as our newest interns this fall. They both come to the Center with impressive backgrounds and unique skills.

Katie McCarthy is a fall intern at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. After receiving her Bachelor’s degree from Connecticut College in 2011, she graduated this May with a Master’s degree in Nonproliferation and Terrorism from the Monterey Institute of International Studies. At the Monterey Institute she served as a graduate research assistant at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies supporting the Nuclear Threat Initiative. Ms. McCarthy interned last summer at Lawrence Livermore National Lab and this summer at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Nonproliferation and National Security department. There she focused on international nuclear safeguards program development and management. She is thrilled to be working at the CACNP this fall, where she hopes to focus on Iran, former Soviet Union States, nuclear nonproliferation and security and nuclear energy spending.

Sarah Tully is also an intern at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. She recently finished her master’s degree in Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asian Security Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Sarah graduated with honors from Barnard College of Columbia University in 2013. She has previously interned at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and West Sands Advisory Limited, a political risk consultancy. She is also proficient in Arabic. At the Center, Sarah is particularly interested in focusing on Iraq, Afghanistan, and nuclear terrorism.

Remembering Szilard: 75th Anniversary of Einstein-Szilard Letter to Roosevelt

“In the course of the last four months it has been made probable…that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.

This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable- though much less certain- that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed.”

On August 2, 1939, Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard sent this warning to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a letter signed by none other than Albert Einstein.

Saturday marked the 75th anniversary of the Einstein-Szilard letter. And yet the dangers Szilard warned against in his letter 75 years ago still loom over society: now in the form of over ten thousand nuclear warheads spread across the globe. In revisiting the writings of Leo Szilard, it is chilling to note how many of his words, drafted in a different era, still apply to the world today. Much has changed since the Einstein-Szilard letter arrived on the doorstep of President Roosevelt 75 years ago; leadership has risen and fallen, technology has progressed in leaps and bounds, wars and revolutions have sparked and faded. Yet still the threat of nuclear war remains. Worse, that threat has proliferated.

Scientists have always played a complex role with regard to nuclear weapons. While nuclear physicists were the individuals immediately responsible for the weapons’ design and creation, the same nuclear physicists were often the individuals protesting the government’s use of these weapons and warning against the inevitability of their eventual proliferation. Such was the case with Leo Szilard, a man vital to the atomic bomb’s construction.

Among Szilard’s numerous scientific innovations, he was the first to conceptualize and later successfully test a controlled uranium nuclear chain reaction, a chemical process integral to creating an atomic explosion. It was this discovery that compelled him to draft the Einstein-Szilard letter on August 2, 1939, cautioning the President on the new implications for nuclear weapons and urging Roosevelt to act. Roosevelt took the letter to heart; his choice of action was to charge Szilard and a team of other scientists with the Manhattan Project, a project with the ultimate goal of creating an atomic bomb for the United States.

However, when we remember Szilard today, it is not solely for his role as a physicist in constructing the first atomic bomb. It is also for his role as an advocate, in championing messages of peace and disarmament to a world that seemed set on war and destruction. In this way, Szilard embodies the kind of scientists who have fought and continue to fight for a responsible and ethical approach towards nuclear weapons. Today, organizations such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, Scientists for Global Responsibility, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists continue to warn of the dangers that nuclear weapons pose to society. Where Szilard first cautioned against nuclear threats from Germany and later from the Soviet Union, scientists today point towards a multitude of possible disaster scenarios: tensions in South Asia and the Korean peninsula resulting in nuclear exchanges, non-state actors obtaining nuclear weapons through theft, and nuclear terrorism in the Middle East are just a handful of the frightening possibilities.

The Einstein-Szilard letter may have been the beginning, but Leo Szilard continued to write extensively on the topic long after the Manhattan Project concluded. He wrote against the use and spread of nuclear weapons following the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, protesting their usefulness during the Cold War. In Szilard’s 1961 speech “Are We on the Road To War”, he stated his argument succinctly:

             “If we intend to drop our bombs on Russia in case of war and expect Russia
              to drop her bombs on us, so that both countries would be wholly devastated,
              then our threat to drop bombs on Russia is tantamount to a threat of murder and
              suicide.”

It is no longer 1961, but the irrational dual threat of murder and suicide lingers. Although we no longer teeter on the brink of a Cold War, the dangers of nuclear proliferation still pose a real threat.

On this 75th anniversary of the Einstein-Szilard letter, we would like to commemorate Leo Szilard, Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, and all the atomic scientists who condemned nuclear weapons as unethical and impractical. We would like to thank the many scientists today who still demand greater nonproliferation efforts, collaborate on possibilities for disarmament, and write on the dangers of nuclear weapons. Finally, we would like to keep in mind that although many years have passed since 1939, there is still much work to be done to create a world safe from the threat of nuclear destruction.