Randall Forsberg and the Nuclear Freeze Movement
New Digital Collection at Cornell Library
The Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies (IDDS) was founded in 1979 by the scholar-activist Randall Caroline Watson Forsberg (1943-2007) to conduct research on military forces and the prospects for disarmament and to provide knowledge in support of peace activism. This digital collection represents a small sample of the full archive, held in the Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections (RMC).
IDDS became the first headquarters of the influential Nuclear Weapons Freeze campaign and it collaborated with the European Nuclear Disarmament (END) movement and colleagues worldwide, including in the Soviet bloc. The Institute's publications included the Arms Control Reporter (a monthly update on negotiations), the World Weapon Database, and the Peace Resource Book, along with a newsletter. Cornell faculty members Judith Reppy and Matthew Evangelista served on the Institute’s board of directors while Forsberg maintained her connection to Cornell with occasional visits for seminars, lectures and conferences.
Upon Forsberg’s untimely death from cancer, Professor Reppy, as chair of the IDDS board, assumed responsibility for the voluminous IDDS archive and secured its transfer to the Cornell University Library.
Additional resources:
Introduction to the collection, by Agnieszka Nimark and Matthew Evangelista:
Randall Forsberg and the Nuclear Freeze Movement: Selected Materials from the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies Archive
Coverage of the digital project (Feb. 2022):
Nuclear Freeze documents digitized
Guide to the full collection:
Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies Records, 1974-2007.Collection Number: 8588
Access the digital collection:
Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies Records, Digital Collection.
Acknowledgments:
The creation of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies Records Collection was supported by the Grants Program for Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences, awarded to Matthew Evangelista, Government; Agnieszka Nimark, Judith Reppy Institute for Peace & Conflict Studies; Judith Reppy, Science & Technology Studies, in 2019.