Lauren Kastner | Oct. 14, 2011
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| Photo by Lauren Kastner |
| Author Ron Rosenbaum, author of books and writer for Salon and other magazines, spoke on "The Ethics of Armageddon" Tuesday at the IMU. His talk was part of the Themester program. |
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“Things have become more dangerous since the Cold War,” Rosenbaum said. “Now there are nine nuclear nations, some with very loose ideas about the control of nuclear missiles.”
Rosenbaum’s talk, “The Ethics of Armageddon: Moral Issues in the Threat and Use of Nuclear Weapons,” was sponsored by the Indiana University Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and co-sponsored by the Hutton Honors College. It was part of the College of Arts and Sciences Themester program, “Making War, Making Peace.”
Rosenbaum drew from his research from his latest book, How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III, which covers the history of Cold War policies to today’s risk of nuclear war in the Middle East.
His greatest criticism of the United States’ possession of nuclear missiles was how easy it would be for the United States to launch missiles and how often the government receives false-positive readings when detecting missile threats.
“There are no checks on the president—no breathalyzer, no sanity test—to prevent the president from launching nuclear missiles,” Rosenbaum said.
Rosenbaum also questioned the morality of having a nuclear policy in which nuclear missiles that can be programmed and launched within 15 minutes out of underground stores in Wyoming can kill millions of people.
“This is what I try to do in my book: I try to reawaken discussion of these moral questions,” Rosenbaum said.
Rosenbaum has written several books on topics from Shakespeare to Hitler, spending 10 years researching Explaining Hitler. He also writes The Spectator column for Slate, and his work has appeared in Harper's, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine and The New York Observer.
Before the lecture, Alvin Rosenfeld, director of Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, invited Rosenbaum to talk to students in his class, a Themester course, “Anne Frank and Hitler: Studies in the Representations of Good and Evil.”
“He is a very engaging speaker and a compelling writer,” Rosenfeld said. “His work contains all the discipline of an academic and the probing of a journalist. Being a reportorial scholar is potent.”
Matt Auer, dean of the Hutton Honors College, said that while he did not agree with all of Rosenbaum’s solutions to eradicating nuclear weapons, he was glad students and the IU community were exposed to these ideas.
“You want people who raise those tough questions to our students,” Auer said. “This is exactly what we expect for a Themester lecture. It gives us something to ponder.”
Auer also commended Rosenbaum’s status not as an expert on nuclear warfare, but as a journalist.
“Even though he is a journalist, what he does is quite authoritative,” Auer said.
School of Journalism professor Steve Raymer is participating in Themester by hosting former U.S. Army Col. Jill Morgenthaler in his J460 Conflict, Terror and Humanitarian Intervention Oct. 17.
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