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Speaker's Biography: The author of the acclaimed The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of Our Soldiers provides a unique analysis of the moral weight of warfare through the lenses of philosophy and psychology.

Bekhzod Yuldashev is a CISAC Visiting Scholar. He served as a consultant-advisor at the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2006-2007. Prior to that, he was director-general of the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Uzbekistan Academy of Science from 1990 to 2006. From 1984 to 1990, he served as head of the laboratory in the Physical Technical Institute in Tashkent, where he had been a senior researcher since 1972.

Yuldashev has published about 300 scientific papers dedicated to various subjects of particle and nuclear physics in the wide range of primary energies. His experimental research has revealed or proven important concepts in nuclear energy, and he holds more than 20 patents on nuclear applications.

He is a full member of the Academy of Science of Uzbekistan and served as the academy's president from September 2000 through November 2005. In 2000-2004 he was elected a Member of Parliament of the Republic of Uzbekistan, and in 2004-2005 was elected a Senator.

He is a fellow of Islamic Academy of Sciences, a member of the American Physical Society. From 1992 to 2002, he was an elected member of the Scientific Council of the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research, in Dubna, Russia, one of two international nuclear centers in the world. He is also a member of the IAEA's Standing Advisory Group for Nuclear Applications, a fellow of the Islamic Countries Academy, and foreign member of the National Academy of Kazakhstan. He is an honorary professor of Samarkand State University and honorary doctor of the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research (2004). He won the 2004 Economic Cooperation Organization's excellence award in science and technology and the 1983 Uzbekistan State Prize for Science and Technology.

Yuldashev graduated from Tashkent and Moscow Universities in 1968. He earned his PhD in physics and mathematics from the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia, in 1971.

This talk is part of the Defusing the Nuclear Threat lecture series.

Siegfried Hecker is Director Emeritus of Los Alamos National Laboratories and co-Director of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). He describes his talk as follows: The exchange of hundreds of nuclear weapons which would threaten life on Earth as we know it has all but disappeared with the end of the Cold War. The potential of a limited nuclear exchange has increased with the spread of nuclear weapons to places like South Asia. Yet, the greatest nuclear risk stems from the potential of sub-national or terrorist groups obtaining fissile materials, building an improvised nuclear device, and exploding it in a major city somewhere in the world. I will present my list of the greatest threats, headed by Pakistan, and explore what we must do to manage these risks.

A map and parking information can be found here.

This talk is part of the Defusing the Nuclear Threat lecture series.

Joseph Martz is the inaugural William Perry CISAC Fellow at Stanford, on leave from Los Alamos, where he headed their RRW (Reliable Replacement Warhead) design team. This talk reviews US nuclear weapons development and its close linkage to deterrence during the Cold War. Looking forward, the shift in policy to a goal of further reductions in, and ultimate elimination of, nuclear weapons presents new challenges. It will be suggested how – contrary to popular thinking – redesigning our nuclear weapons and reconfiguring the nuclear weapons complex could contribute to further reductions, and potentially, the elimination of nuclear weapons.

A map and parking information can be found here.

Steve Coll is president of New America Foundation, and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. Previously he spent 20 years as a foreign correspondent and senior editor at The Washington Post, serving as the paper's managing editor from 1998 to 2004. He is the author of six books, including The Deal of the Century: The Break Up of AT&T (1986); The Taking of Getty Oil (1987); Eagle on the Street, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the SEC's battle with Wall Street (with David A. Vise, 1991); On the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey into South Asia (1994), Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004); and The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (2008).

Mr. Coll's professional awards include two Pulitzer Prizes. He won the first of these, for explanatory journalism, in 1990, for his series, with David A. Vise, about the SEC. His second was awarded in 2005, for his book, Ghost Wars, which also won the Council on Foreign Relations' Arthur Ross award; the Overseas Press Club award and the Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book published on international affairs during 2004. Other awards include the 1992 Livingston Award for outstanding foreign reporting; the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award for his coverage of the civil war in Sierra Leone; and a second Overseas Press Club Award for international magazine writing. Mr. Coll graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Cum Laude, from Occidental College in 1980 with a degree in English and history. He lives in Washington, D.C.

​Drell Lecture Recording: NA

Drell Lecture Transcript: NA

Speaker's Biography: NA