Join us for a screening of the documentary Bombshell (2026) on Wednesday, September 16, at 6:00 p.m.

In the acclaimed 1964 film Dr. Strangelove, an American president calls a drunken Soviet Premier with bad news: “…Dimitri, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb...” The “something” is a deranged commander who has launched a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, which leads to nuclear apocalypse. While a global apocalypse has yet to materialize, the history of nuclear weapons is full of other things going wrong. Indigenous lands have been destroyed, hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people have died of cancer, and trillions of dollars have been spent on weapons that one U.S. Defense Secretary ultimately concluded were “useless.”

Today the majority of the world’s nations have joined the Treaty for the Prohibition on Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), and surveys suggest strong public support for the TPNW, even in nations that possess nuclear weapons. However, the nine nations in the world that have nuclear weapons are continuing a costly and dangerous nuclear arms race which endangers all life on earth. In this full-day symposium, distinguished experts from diverse disciplines—including physics, political science, history, feminist studies, and peace and conflict studies—will discuss contemporary dangers of nuclear weapons, how we got here, and how we can work for a more secure and peaceful future.

This symposium is cosponsored by the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and the Department of Government at Cornell University, on the occasion of Professor Matthew Evangelista’s retirement from Cornell. Professor Evangelista’s scholarship makes groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of the nuclear arms race and means of ending it, and we are pleased to honor his distinguished career in peace and conflict studies.

Panels:

10:00 AM to 11:30 AM: Nuclear Arms Races and How to Stop Them
Ray Acheson (Princeton), David Cortright (Cornell), Lisbeth Gronlund (MIT)

11:30 AM to 12:00 PM: Lunch Break

12:00 PM to 1:15 PM: Keynote: Benoît Pelopidas, Sciences Po, Paris

1:15 PM to 1:30 PM: Coffee Break

1:30 PM to 2:45 PM: New Perspectives on Nuclear Disarmament and Arms Control
"Banning or Facilitating the Test? Reconsidering the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty"
Ruoyu Li (Colgate)

“Atmospheric Absorption: Nuclear Weapons and the Science of Climate Doomsday in the 1970s”
Benjamin Wilson (Harvard)

2:45 PM to 3:45 PM: Coffee Break
Guest appearance by Frank von Hippel and David Holloway via Zoom

3:45 PM to 5:15 PM: Panel: Nuclear War and Climate Catastrophe
Neta Crawford (St. Andrews), Zia Mian (Princeton), and Benoît Pelopidas (Sciences Po)

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies

Co-sponsor
Department of Government

My talk on "Translation and Language Justice in and Beyond Europe” will focus on “language justice,” (a term that does not as-yet refer to a clear field or critical problematic), as a rubric for a vision of language politics straddling law, official global language policy, and language rights under conditions of imperialism and cultural conquest. Drawing on Benjamin Constant’s anti-Napoleonic broadside The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation in Their Relation to European Civilization,” (1814), which diagnosed the psychic violence of linguistic occupation, I will adapt and extend his association of cultural usurpation to contemporary cultural contexts in and beyond Europe. Constant associated usurpation with an existentially grave condition in which each act of articulation becomes a form of self-harming; attacking the site where individual consciousness, auto-identification and affective social ties constitute a fusional core of self and collective identity. The talk will consider the impact of an abrogated “right to language” on political life, from the targeting of languages spoken by immigrants, minorities and noncitizens to the hastening of language extinction as a global phenomenon particularly threatening to the survival of Indigenous languages. I also take up the matter of how generative AI, bolstering the kind of nationalist monolinguism that leads to “English only” language policies as well as the practice of instrumentalized linguistic streamlining conducive machine translation, is emerging as a new political force of linguistic usurpation and conquest.

About the speaker

Emily Apter is Julius Silver Professor of French and Comparative Literature at New York University. She earned her BA from Harvard University and PhD from Princeton University. In 2012, she was appointed Remarque-Ecole Normale Supérieure Visiting Professor; she has also taught at the University of California, Los Angeles; UC Davis; Cornell University; and Williams College. Apter was president of the American Comparative Literature Association in 2017-18. She is editor of the book series Translation/Transnation from Princeton University Press, and serves on the editorial boards of Publications of the Modern Languages Association of America, Comparative Literature, October, Diacritics, Sites, and Signs. A 2003 Guggenheim Fellow, Apter was awarded a two-year Mellon Grant (with Jacques Lezra) in 2011-12, for a seminar on “The Problem of Translation.” In fall 2014, she was a Humanities Council Fellow at Princeton University.

Apter’s books include Unexceptional Politics: On Obstruction, Impasse, and the Impolitic (Verso, 2018), Against World Literature: On The Politics of Untranslatability (Verso, 2013), and The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature (Princeton, 2006). She has also published extensively in Third Text, e-flux, October, boundary 2, New Literary History, Littérature, Artforum, Critical Inquiry, Translation Studies, Cabinet, The Global South, Grey Room, Boston Review, differences, and Public Culture, among others.

Join the International Relations Minor for a virtual career information session featuring Cornell alumni working in diplomacy, education, and law. Panelists will reflect on their career paths, share advice on internships, graduate school, and professional transitions, and answer student questions about careers connected to international relations.

Register here.

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Speakers

Eric Andersen is the Political-Economic Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Maputo, Mozambique. Having joined the U.S. State Department in 2009, he previously served as Political Counselor (Acting) in Islamabad, Pakistan. His other assignments have included Cairo, Kyiv, and Khartoum, as well as in Washington, D.C. as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Prior to entering the Foreign Service, he spent four years on Capitol Hill as a Professional Staff Member for the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. In his first stint with the U.S. Government, he flew the SH-60B “Seahawk” helicopter as an aviator in the U.S. Navy. He holds an M.A. in Security Policy from the George Washington University, and a A.B. in English Literature from Cornell University (Class of 1996).

Angie Yucht Swenson, M.S.Ed., Ed.M., is the founder and principal tutor of AYS Tutoring and Consulting, a practice she launched after more than a decade working in both private and public schools across New York City. She specializes in supporting elementary through high school students with learning challenges and has worked with families from diverse international backgrounds, including Russia, Israel, and France. Angie graduated from Cornell University in 2010, majoring in Human Development and minoring in International Relations, followed by a master’s in General and Special Education from Hunter College, and a master’s in School Leadership from Bank Street College of Education. She resides in NYC with her husband, two daughters, and a goldendoodle.

Emma Marshak is a commercial litigator in Washington, DC who specializes in judgment enforcement. She has enforced domestic and international judgments, including awards from investor-state arbitration, in federal and state courts across the United States.

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This session is presented by the Einaudi Center for International Studies. The International Relations minor is open to all Cornell undergraduate students interested in learning about the politics, economics, history, languages, and cultures of the world.

The College of Arts & Sciences will celebrate the 20-year anniversary of the Cornell Levinson Program in China and Asia-Pacific Studies – and a new faculty director for the program — at an April 24 symposium on the Ithaca campus.

The event, set for 1:35-6:30 p.m. in Room 120 of the Physical Sciences Building, will feature a faculty panel focused on U.S.-China Relations; a conversation between Zachary Montague ‘13, a reporter for The New York Times, and Peter John Loewen, Harold Tanner Dean of Arts & Sciences; and a career panel with CAPS alumni. All of the events are free and open to the public.

The day’s schedule includes:

1:35 p.m.: Welcome and introductions by Loewen and Michael J. Zak ’75, member, Center for a New American Security and board of directors & partner emeritus, Charles River Ventures2 p.m.: Faculty panel featuring Patrizia McBride (moderator), Senior Associate Dean for Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Programs and Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters, Department of German Studies (A&S); Peter Katzenstein, the Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies, Department of Government (A&S); Diana Fu, the new Levinson Program director; Xu Xin, interim director for the Levinson Program and adjunct associate professor, Department of Government; and Jason Oaks M.A. ‘13, who leads the China team at the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.3:15 p.m.: “Higher Ed and International Partnerships,” a conversation between Loewen and Montague, who formerly covered the education department and education policy and now covers federal courts and the balance of power in the federal government4:15 p.m.: Allen Carlson, associate professor of government and former Levinson Program director, in conversation with Levinson program alums Randy Wan ’12, Strauss Cooperstein ’22, Shauna DeLorenzo ’19, Angela Pan’ 23 and Isaac Herzog ’23

The Brittany and Adam J. Levinson Program in China and Asia-Pacific Studies offers students the opportunity to study contemporary China through a set of courses on China's language, history, politics, economy, society and foreign relations. Students also take part in experiences both on-and-off campus, including three years in Ithaca, one optional semester in Washington D.C. and one required semester in Beijing.

Participants

Aaron Erlich is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, where he is a member of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship and an Associate Member of the Centre on Population Dynamics. He is also a faculty research affiliate with NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics. Much of Aaron’s research addresses information's role in developing democratic societies. His work also advances quantitative methods to measure the effect of information.

Regina Faranda is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence & Research. A career member of the Senior Executive Service, Faranda previously served as Director of INR’s Office of Opinion Research, Chief of the Europe and Eurasia Division, and social research analyst for Russia and Ukraine. Throughout her tenure in government, Faranda was dedicated to informing U.S. policy through quantitative social research and to giving people around the world a seat at the U.S. policy table.

Jordan Gans-Morse is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University. His research focuses on corruption, the rule of law, property rights, and political and economic transitions. He is the author of Property Rights in Post-Soviet Russia: Violence, Corruption, and Demand for Law (Cambridge). His articles have appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, the American Political Science Review, and World Development, and he has published commentaries in the Chicago Tribune, The Hill, The Moscow Times, US News & World Report, and The Washington Post.

Kimberly O'Haver is a program manager at the Open Society Foundation, where she coordinates of a group of international drug policy experts working toward progressive drug policy reform for Ukraine's EU Accession process. Her work on drug policy focuses on veterans and affected civilian populations experiencing severe, war-induced trauma and regularly engages veterans and veterans’ groups to understand substance use trends both post-deployment and on the frontlines.

Bryn Rosenfeld is an Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University and a co-Principal Investigator of the Russian Election Study. Her research interests focus on public opinion and voter behavior in nondemocratic systems, development and democratization, protest, post-communist politics, and survey methodology. Her research has been supported by the NSF and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, among other sources. She is a former editor of The Washington Post Monkey Cage Blog.

Charles Whitehead is the Myron C. Taylor Alumni Professor of Business Law at Cornell Law School and the Founding Director of the Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship Program at Cornell Tech. He specializes in the law relating to corporations and other business associations, securities regulation, mergers and acquisitions, and financial regulation. His current scholarship focuses on securities and financial regulation and corporate governance.

Workshop Schedule

9:00am. Coffee

9:15am. Opening Remarks

Bryn Rosenfeld (Cornell)

9:30am-11:15am. Panel: Research for Impact

Cristina Florea (Cornell), Moderator

Presentations:

Charles Whitehead (Cornell Law), “Corporate Governance Reform in Ukraine: Between State Design and Market Discipline”

Aaron Erlich (McGill), “The Past, Present, and Future of Public Opinion Survey Research in Ukraine: From Pen and Paper to Agentic AI (2015-2026)”

Jordan Gans-Morse (Northwestern), “Countering Authoritarian Censorship via Grassroots Communication Campaigns: Evidence from an Experimental Mega-Study in Wartime Russia”

Bryn Rosenfeld (Cornell), “Russian Public Opinion Spanning the Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine: Evidence for Policy and Public Diplomacy”

11:30am-12:30pm. Catered Lunch

1:00pm-2:45pm. Roundtable. Connecting Research to Policy Advocacy and Activism: Challenges and Opportunities

Sophie Pinkham (Cornell), Moderator

Participants:

Regina Faranda (former Deputy Assistant Secretary, U.S. State Department, INR)

Kimberly O’Haver (Open Society Foundation)

Aaron Erlich (McGill)

Jordan Gans-Morse (Northwestern)

Bryn Rosenfeld (Cornell)