Youth Tackle Nuclear Threat at Intensive Summer Program

Nuclear war is closer than ever, but we have the power to prevent it, Dr. Ira Helfand warned a group of students at Soka University of America’s Nuclear Politics 2024 summer program. This stark, but hopeful, message set the tone for an intensive five-day program that brought together experts, a survivor, and young people to tackle one of humanity’s greatest existential threats.

“One thing I tell young people is: You want your lives to matter, to mean something,” said Helfand, the former president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which is part of the steering group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, an organization that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. “Those of us alive today have been given the opportunity to save the world.”

Soka Institute for Global Solutions (SIGS) hosted the second nuclear politics summer program at SUA last month. Founded in 2022, SIGS is based on ideas laid out in SUA founder Daisaku Ikeda’s 1987 Peace Proposal to the United Nations. The institute is led by Andrea Bartoli as executive adviser, Tetsushi Ogata as managing director, and Yuya Uchida as coordinator. A cohort of dedicated student workers and alumni also support the nuclear politics project.

The intensive program featured three guest lecturers from the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Masako Toki, senior project manager and research associate, presented on the role of civil society movements and global efforts for disarmament and nuclear abolition. Senior Research Associate David Schmerler focused on current nuclear risks in North Korea’s missile development programs. Research Associate Yanliang Pan discussed artificial intelligence and nuclear nonproliferation. Participants also heard stories from hibakusha (atomic bombing survivor) Masako Wada, who serves as the assistant secretary general to Japan’s Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organization.

The summer program is offered free of charge to those accepted. The program was open to undergraduate and graduate students of all academic backgrounds. The institute selected 12 participants from 10 colleges and universities, including one high school member. Participants stay on campus, where they attend all-day sessions and participate in evening activities including watching films related to nuclear weapons. Sessions include an introduction to the humanitarian underpinnings of the case for nuclear abolition, debates on nuclear deterrence theory, the future of the disarmament and nonproliferation regime and the nuclear weapon ban treaty, and viable nuclear risk reduction strategies. The program culminates in a final project in which participants collaboratively devise concrete action plans to abolish nuclear weapons.

Ikeda’s staunch belief in nuclear abolition served as a foundation for the intensive program. He believed that the very existence of nuclear weapons violates humanity’s right to life. Participants read portions of Ikeda’s address to the Civil Society Peace Forum held at the Cooper Union on September 8, 2007, in which he asserted that “peace is always a competition between resignation and hope. Indifference and acquiescence in the face of evil must be recognized as negative, destructive functions of life; to submit to such impulses is, ultimately, to side with forces of destruction.” One session also introduced participants to the work of Ikeda’s mentor, Josei Toda. In his “Declaration for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons,” Toda states, “We, the citizens of the world, have an inviolable right to live.”

On the last day of the program, participants presented their action plans to the SUA community that they pledged to implement in their respective communities after returning home. Projects included written articles, a speaker series, a dialogue with local city council members, and a screenplay.

“This program has been incredible,” program participant Lucas Tuttle, who had just graduated from San Diego State University, said at the closing ceremony. “Here, I learned that we are trying to be better than the last 80 years of arms racing. We are trying to be better than our worst selves.”

Toki, one of the lecturers from the Middlebury Institute, acknowledged the daunting and at times discouraging work of fighting to abolish nuclear weapons. “I would like to thank each one of you,” she said. “It’s easy to get pessimistic. I would like to remind you that you have the option not to give up.”

Katherine King, executive vice president of university community at SUA, thanked those who worked behind the scenes as well as the students who traveled long distances to participate. For King, this program is especially personal, as her mother survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

King quoted Ikeda’s 2009 Nuclear Abolition Proposal in her closing remarks, reminding attendees that “in this work, no one has a more crucial role to play than young people… It is the passion of youth that spreads the flames of courage throughout society. This courage, transmitted from one person to the next, can melt the daunting walls of difficulties and open the horizons of a new era in human history.”