Nuclear Knowledge Production: Authority, Truths, and Making Sense of the Bomb

Speakers:

• Dr. Carol Cohn, Founding Director, Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights 
• Dr. Benoît Pelopidas, Director, Nuclear Knowledges, Sciences Po 
• Dr. Jayita Sarkar, Founding Director, Global Decolonization Initiative, Boston University 

Moderator:

• Dr. Mariana Budjeryn, Research Associate, Project on Managing the Atom 

Nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors are designed, built, deployed, and managed—with intention and purpose—by human beings embedded in and shaped by institutional, social, and political contexts. These contexts affect how people interpret and respond to the benefits and dangers of nuclear technologies. But whose interpretations and modes of reasoning count as authoritative, competent, and trustworthy—and whose are discounted or dismissed? How did the existing nuclear hierarchies of knowledge and practice come into being? What threats and opportunities are inherent in expanding and diversifying the intellectual, institutional, and regional engagements with the nuclear threat, and what are the barriers to such expansion? The panel brings together an international group of scholars to debate these questions from various vantage points: language, intellectual and institutional history, and colonial legacy.