Richard Rhodes has written a one-act play, Reykjavik, which is an eighty-minute dialogue based upon the actual transcripts from the conversation between the two Presidents.  Mr. Rhodes, a renowned author has chronicled the nuclear age with numerous books and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his book, The Making of the Atomic Bomb this is his first play.

Reykjavik, the play, will be performed at 7:00 p.m. on both Tuesday, May 8th and Wednesday, May 9th at the new Cemex Auditorium at The Knight School of Management on the Stanford University campus.  After the Tuesday performance a short question and answer session will be held with the audience . Mr. Rhodes and Phillip Taubman, N.Y. Times journalist, author, professor and nuclear expert, who covered the Reykjavik Summit in person for the N.Y. Times will be on stage.

On Wednesday, May 9th the performance will be followed by comments and a question and answer by Dr. Charles Ferguson, President of the Federation of American Scientists and Dr. Sidney Drell of the Hoover Institute’s Nuclear Security Project.

Reykjavik the play will have prior to each performance a pre-show viewing of Sonya Rapoport’s “The Nuclear Family in the Atomic Age”.  Her images will be shown before each performance of Reykjavik.  Also, being shown will be a five minute video by the Nuclear Literacy Project created by Dr. Sri Devabhaktuni.”

The Reykjavik Project will also unveil a new public opinion questionnaire that will be the work of Professor Jon Krasnick  of Stanford’s Department of Political Science.  This questionnaire will be offered to all event participants and will be used in future events and made available to other non-proliferation / disarmament initiatives.  It will be a survey assessing the hopes, fears and expectations of the general public for governmental policies that will lead to a world where the elimination of nuclear weapons is valued and activity pursued.

The overall objective of the Reykjavik Project is to spark awareness and a sense of empowerment to our audience that they can speak out and demand a world that exists without nuclear weapons.  President Reagan and President Gorbachev felt this in their hears as have many world leaders prior to Reykjavik and after.  Why can’t we get this done?  The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and these steps must be taken by many not just the few.

The moderator for the panel discussion was Philip Taubman, who worked at the New York Times as a reporter and editor, specializing in national security issues, including defense policies. Mr. Taubman brought an interesting perspective to the panel discussion, when he noted that such “Cold War worriers” as George Shultz and William Perry set aside their past concerns and party interests to promote nuclear disarmament from a nonpartisan perspective.

George Shultz highlighted several goals for the United States as a leading nation in reducing the global nuclear weapons stockpile. Among those goals: ratification of CTBT and START, haulting production of HEU and PU at the global level, and nuclear materials security. Dr. Sidney Drell, Head of SLAC, agreed with Shultz especially on the CTBT ratification, explaining that from the technical standpoint the ban on testing nuclear weapons will be beneficial to the United Sates national security and not the opposite. Dr. Drell, expert in nuclear phisics and nuclear weapons, further noted that the international monitoring system and the US technological capabilities make it impossible for other contries to conduct a secret nuclear test without being noticed. Therefore, there is a way to control nuclear testing and prevent other countries develop such technologies unnoticed. CTBT calls for ban on any nuclear weapon testing, which naturally leads to haulting nuclear weapons production.

Tyler Wigg Stevenson, the founding director of the Two Futures Project, and Edmund Rennolds, the CTNT President, elaborated on concrete steps toward creating the nessesary nonpartisan consesnus and strategy for engaging business community to address nuclear security and nuclear disarmament.

The breifing of this sort is one of the first of its kind in the Bay Area. The attending business leaders were shocked, intrigued and interested in purusing the steps needed to help promote nuclear weapons reduction and strengthening nuclear nonproliferation. About 30-40% of the Silicon Valley companies are young professionals in their 30s, for whom fear of «nuclear exchange» and devastating Cold War reality is a text in a history book. One of the main outcomes of the meeting was a decision and agreement to focuse efforts on educating younger generations via viral message.

Moderator Melanie Greenberg is president and founder of the Cypress Fund for Peace and Security.
Greenberg was director of the Conflict Resolution grantmaking program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Prior to joining the Hewlett Foundation, Ms. Greenberg served as the associate director of the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation, and deputy director of the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation. In her work on international conflict resolution, Ms. Greenberg has helped design and facilitate public peace processes in the Middle East, the Caucasus and Ireland.  She is a member of the United Nations Advisory Committee on the Prevention of Genocide. Ms. Greenberg holds an BA magna cum laude from Harvard, and a JD from Stanford Law School.

Listen to Melanie Greenberg talk about the goals of Cypress Fund

Sidney D. Drell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a professor of theoretical physics (emeritus) at Stanford’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, where he served at deputy director until retiring in 1998. An arms control specialist, he has advised the executive and legislative branches of government on national security and defense technical issues for more than four decades. From 1983 to 1989, he was the founding codirector of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Arms Control.

Listen to Sidney Drell’s 15 minute talk

David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory.

Listen to David’s 20 minute talk

Questions from the audience