Renowned activist Dr. Ira Helfand, known for his work in raising awareness on and combatting the dangers of nuclear weapons, will deliver a lecture about the threat nuclear warfare poses to humanity and how the public can help mitigate, if not demolish, it. Dr. Helfand is a member of the International Steering Group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which received the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, and Past President of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the founding partner of ICAN and itself the recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize.

He is also co-founder and Past President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, IPPNW’s U.S. affiliate, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Back from the Brink campaign. In 2023 he received the Gandhi King Ikeda Award from the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College.

He has published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, the British Medical Journal, and the World Medical Journal on the medical consequences of nuclear war and has lectured about nuclear war in Russia, China, Japan, Korea, India, Pakistan, Israel, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, and across Europe and North America. He spoke at the 2013 and 2014 International Conferences on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons and chaired the session on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons at the UN Open-Ended Working Group in 2016 that led to the negotiation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons the following year. Dr. Helfand was educated at Harvard College and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and recently retired as a staff physician at Family Care Medical Center. He lives with his wife, Deborah Smith, a medical oncologist, in Leeds, MA, and has two grown sons and two grandchildren.

This event is open to the public.

Sponsored by the Political Science Department.