Speakers at last night's "Religion, Ethics, and the Bomb" panel initiated the 25th Anniversary Norris and Margery Bendetson EPIIC International Symposium with a discussion of the intersection of nuclear weaponry and the spheres of religion and ethics.
The panel marked the start of the five-day-long annual symposium that brings together prominent speakers and experts as the culmination of the Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) colloquium, sponsored by the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL).
"We're looking for what we have called all these years passionate scholarship," IGL Director Sherman Teichman said. "Sometimes people scorn the whole concept of academic as being moot. To me, an academic environment is the ideal place for the candid, open exchange of ideas."
Teichman stressed the importance and relevancy of this year's symposium's theme, "Our Nuclear Age: Peril and Promise."
"We're trying to subject this complex issue to an interdisciplinary prism . ... What would be distinctive about it is the salience and the importance of this theme, which has been marginalized," he said. "Our speakers have articulated very forcefully why it is imperative to deal with such a critical issue."
Last night's panelists discussed the relevance of religion on a personal and community level in dealing with the issue of nuclear weapons.
David Cortright, director of policy studies at the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, discussed the idea of "Nuclear Zero," or a world without nuclear weapons, about which he has co-authored a book.
This concept of Nuclear Zero has been promoted by the so-called "Four Horsemen," former U.S. Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry and former U.S. Senate Armed Forces Committee Chairman Sam Nunn. Cortright added that the religious community has played a large role in advancing this agenda, which these statesmen have legitimized.
"I think because this is such a fundamentally central moral question ... we've seen that the faith community has been more mobilized in this area than any other security-related issue," Cortright said.
He added that there was room for the further expansion of the religious community's role.
"One of the issues that came up ... is that there was the need to enhance that engagement by faith communities, to take the lead from these eminent statesmen, to realize from them that there is a realist argument, and to combine that with a moral voice to provide guidance for our leaders ... to move nuclear levels hopefully down to zero," Cortright said.
Fellow panelist Chanikarn Wongviriyawong, a Ph.D. candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the Buddhist movement Soka Gakkai International, emphasized instead the personal transformations that needed to take place in order to remove the threat of nuclear weapons.
"Buddhism teaches that every instant comprises limitless possibilities; our thoughts, words and deeds determine what happen from moment to moment," she said. "Religion seeks to empower individuals and bring us toward our shared goal of world peace."
J. Bryan Hehir, the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Religion and Public Life at Harvard University, said religion will make an invaluable contribution to the goal of a nuclear-free world.
"As we pursue that realistic possibility, it is not only politics and ethics we need — we need one other resource from the religious community and that is hope," he said. "Hope is nourished by reason and faith. Reason, faith and hope are the resources we need to face the challenges of the third nuclear age."
Hehrir also provided his ethical take on the nonproliferation.
"At the heart of the ethical problem of nonproliferation is that the nonproliferation regime is inherently discriminatory. ... It is designed to make sure that some do not have what others do," he said.
The panelists also engaged in a discussion about the deterrent value of nuclear weapons. Michael Broyde, professor of law and academic director of Emory University's Law and Religion Program, suggested that the emphasis on nuclear nonproliferation may have overshadowed the underlying general issue of worldwide loss of life.
"It's the death of innocent beings that is the problem, regardless of how they are being killed," he said.
Michael Light, a visual artist and photographer, brought a slightly different perspective to the discussion. His book "100 Suns" (2003) visually documents nuclear testing. He highlighted in particular the landmark 1952 test of the first hydrogen bomb, which was 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb that detonated in Hiroshima.
"Two humans actually figuring out how to ignite their own stars is an outstanding achievement, unparalleled," he said. "That it was born from a cauldron of violence and that it was immediately put back into the cauldron of violence is the great tragedy and burden of this moment."
Sophomore Will Shira, a member of the EPIIC class, noted the unique nature of the opening panel, which he said set a tone for the rest of the symposium.
"What's interesting is that this was the least factual, most spiritual of everything we've done so far," he said. "What we can expect to come is the cold hard facts that informed these individuals' spiritual and ethical views ... which can lead to a more individualized and current understanding of nuclear technology and its moral implications."
The symposium continues tonight with a panel discussion on nuclear power and will run through Sunday, featuring prominent speakers such as Former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry.
Shira expressed his excitement about the caliber of this year's speakers at the symposium.
"I can say we have the most prestigious set of speakers than any symposium in the past and have the greatest ability to do the most good if we have the energy of the school behind us," he said.
Teichman anticipated a stimulating discussion over the next few days.
"We are bringing together disparate perspectives from different disciplines to allow for very candid, and sometimes very unexpected, exchanges," he said.
