Gambling with Armageddon: Reflections on the 60th Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis

About the Event: A panel discussion convened in partnership with the Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice, University of San Francisco, the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, and the World House Project, Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, Stanford University.

About the Speakers:

Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Mimi and Peter Haas University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. He also serves as Chairman of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.

Clayborne Carson, the Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial Professor of History, emeritus, at Stanford University, has devoted his professional life to the study of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the human rights movements inspired by King, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and other visionaries. His award-winning first book, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s, was published in 1981 and remains the definitive study of the courageous activists and organizers who challenged the strongholds of segregation. In 1985, Mrs. Coretta Scott King chose Dr. Carson to edit and publish a definitive, multi-volume edition of her late husband’s speeches, sermons, correspondence, publications, and unpublished writings. In addition to publishing numerous other books and scholarly articles, Carson has also reached broader audiences as a senior advisor to the Eyes on the Prize series and his contributions to more than two dozen subsequent documentaries. After launching the online Liberation Curriculum for K-12 students, Carson founded Stanford's Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute in 2005 to disseminate King-related educational resources to a global audience. After retiring as the King Institute’s Director, Carson has continued his online educational efforts by establishing The World House Project to collaborate with other human rights advocates to realize King's vision of a global community in which all people can "learn somehow to live with each other in peace.”

Rose Gottemoeller is the Steven C. Házy Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and its Center for International Security and Cooperation. Before joining Stanford Gottemoeller was the Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019, where she helped to drive forward NATO’s adaptation to new security challenges in Europe and in the fight against terrorism.  Prior to NATO, she served for nearly five years as the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the U.S. Department of State, advising the Secretary of State on arms control, nonproliferation and political-military affairs. While Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance in 2009 and 2010, she was the chief U.S. negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation.

David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. It has been translated into seven languages, most recently into Chinese. The Chinese translation is due to be published later in 2018. Holloway also wrote The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (1983) and co-authored The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment (1984). He has contributed to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, and other scholarly journals.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.