Peace Now: No Nukes Over South Asia
In the past twenty years since the nuclear weapons tests by India and Pakistan, both countries have sunk into deeper social crises and seen the rise of inequality, militarization, and religious nationalism, creating an urgent threat to peace in the subcontinent and security in the world. Four prominent public intellectuals from Pakistan and India will address a public forum on matters that have engaged them in their work on democracy, human rights, pluralism, freedom of expression, and peace.
Panel:
Zia Mian: The Nuclear Danger in South Asia
A. H. Nayyar: Building Peace Under the Nuclear Shadow
Rammanohar Reddy: Crisis of Democracy and the Assault on the Media
Achin Vanaik: Nationalism, Democracy, Internationalism
Moderator: Haider Nizamani
The panel will be followed by a film: Pakistan and India Under the Nuclear Shadow (33 minutes)
Speaker profiles:
Zia Mian is a physicist, activist and co-director of Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, which is part of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. His research and teaching focuses on nuclear weapons and nuclear energy policy. He is co-chair of the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM), a group of independent experts from eighteen countries working to reduce global stockpiles of nuclear weapon-useable material. He serves on the board of the Arms Control Association and previously served on the board of Peace Action, the largest US grassroots peace network. He received the 2014 Linus Pauling Legacy Award for “his accomplishments as a scientist and as a peace activist in contributing to the global effort for nuclear disarmament and for a more peaceful world. In 2018, he was selected as one of the “60 faces of CND” by the UK Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament to mark its 60th anniversary.
Dr. Abdul Hameed Nayyar is a physicist who retired from Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad after serving it for over 30 years. He has a PhD in theoretical condensed matter physics from Imperil College London. He has worked extensively on the technical analysis of nuclear disarmament issues and associated with programs that provide education to children of disadvantaged sections of the society. Dr. Nayyar is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials and was awarded the 2010 Joseph A. Burton Award from the American Physical Society. He has participated in national, regional and international anti-nuclear peace movements and served as President of the Pakistan Peace Coalition, and was a founding member of the Asian Peace Alliance.
C. Rammanohar Reddy has a Ph.D. in Economics but has been in journalism since 1988. He is currently Readers’ Editor at Scroll.in. He was earlier Editor of ‘Economic and Political Weekly’ (2004-16). With MV Ramana he co-edited “Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream” (Orient Longman, 2003). He is the author of “Demonetisation and Black Money” (2017).
Achin Vanaik is a retired Professor of “International Relations and Global Politics” in the Political Science Department of Delhi University. He has authored or coauthored or edited or co-edited 10 books ranging from studies on contemporary India’s politics/economy/foreign policy to matters of religion, secularism, communalism and nationalism to issues of international politics and nuclear disarmament. He has been actively involved in various civil liberties and anti-communal activities and is a founder-member of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP), India. He has been a Fellow of the Transnational Institute based in Amsterdam from 1988 onwards and has served twice on the Board of Executives of Greenpeace India. Along with Praful Bidwai, he was awarded the Sean MacBride International Peace Prize for the year 2000.
Organized by South Asian Network forSecularism and Democracy (SANSAD). Co-sponsored by the Institute for the Humanities, SFU, South Asian Film Education Society (SAFES), and Committee of Progressive Pakistani Canadians (CPPC). Speakers courtesy of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, UBC.
Date: May 26, 2018 (Saturday), 2 to 5 PM
Venue: Room 7000, Harbour Centre, Simon Fraser University, 515 W Hastings St, Vancouver, BC V6B 5K3
Video record of the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyG1s4Qwajo