Randall Forsberg, Executive Director of the Institute for Defense & Disarmament Studies (IDDS), in Cambridge, Mass. will discuss "The New US Missile Defense Program and Arms Control in the Post-Cold War Era" at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, October 17 in 1910 Buchanan Hall. This event is taking place in conjunction with Professor Mark Juergenmeyer's course on "Global Conflict" in the Global & International Studies Program.

The US National Missile Defense (NMD) program, racing ahead under President Bush, threatens to unravel 30 years worth of US and Russian efforts to reduce and ultimately eliminate nuclear arms. Even though (or perhaps because) the planned NMD base in Alaska is meant to intercept missiles from North Korea, the Bush Administration has suspended talks to end the North Korean missile program; and it has opposed many other widely supported international treaties. Can arms control survive this onslaught? If so, what should be our hopes and goals for future agreements to build confidence, reduce arms, and head off new threats of war?

After receiving her B.A. at Columbia University and Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Randall Forsberg worked at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, starting in 1968, and was a regular contributor to the SIPRI Yearbook of World Armaments and Disarmament, writing on US and Soviet nuclear weapons, until 1979. In 1980 Forsberg wrote the "Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race," the four-page manifesto that launched the national Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. After founding the Freeze Clearinghouse, she co-chaired of the Freeze Campaign's National Advisory Board from 1980 through 1984, during which time she received a five-year Mac Arthur Foundation Fellowship (the so-called "genius award").

In 1980 she also founded the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies (IDDS), a Cambridge-based nonprofit center which she directs. At IDDS, Forsberg publishes the Arms Control Reporter, a monthly reference work, and she is the series editor of the annually updated IDDS Database: World Arms Holdings, Production, and Trade. She is also the editor of the forthcoming IDDS annual survey, War and Armaments, Peace and Disarmament--Global Trends, Prospects, and Policy Options.

Forsberg has authored or edited many books, including Resources Devoted to Military Research and Development: An International Comparison (1972), The Price of Defense (1979), Peace Resource Book (1985), Cutting Conventional Forces (1989), The Arms Production Dilemma: Contraction and Restraint in the World Combat Aircraft Industry (1994), Nonproliferation Primer (1995), and Abolishing War: Culture and Institutions (with Elise Boulding, 1998). She has contributed to Scientific American, International Security, Technology Review, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, World Policy Journal, and other journals.

In 1989 Forsberg briefed President Bush and his Cabinet officials on US-Soviet arms control issues. In 1995 she was appointed by President Clinton to the Advisory Committee of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. She has also served on panels for the US Congressional Research Service, the US General Accounting Office, and the US Office of Technology Assessment; testified for the US Congress and the Swedish Parliament; given talks at West Point, the US Air Force Academy, the National Defense University, and the German War College; and met with senior government officials of Russia, China, Germany, Norway, and other countries. She is on the board or advisory board of the Boston Review, Arms Control Association, Journal of Peace Research, University of California Institute for Global Cooperation and Conflict, and Women's Action for New Directions.

This event is part of the "Global Peace, Security, and Human Rights" lecture series being sponsored by the UC Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation, UCSB Arts & Lectures, Global and International Studies Program, Global Peace and Security Program and Interdisciplinary Humanities Center. It is being put on in partnership with the Santa Barbara Committee on Foreign Relations, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, PAX 2100, International Studies Association at Santa Barbara City College, and the International Studies Program at Ventura College.