Jewish Intellectuals and the Birth of the Nuclear Era
A online course in January 2025
Hi, Doomsday Machines subscribers. This is not a “real post” and you can delete it with impunity. I just wanted to let you know about something I’m doing in January that there are still some enrollment slots open for. So it’s an advertisement, of sorts. Just a warning. Don’t worry — I will keep this kind of a thing to a minimum.
I was asked a month or so ago by the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research if I might be interested in teaching an online-only course for the Yivo-Bard College Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization, particularly on the subject of Jews and nuclear weapons. After checking that the organization was kosher (har har), I thought about this for a bit. Did I actually have six lectures worth of things to say on this topic? Did I want to talk about this? Should I talk about it? Should I talk about it?
I concluded that I could come up with some interesting things to say about this topic. I’ve sometimes been asked (cautiously) by colleagues about the overrepresentation of Jewish people in the American nuclear world in particular — for both better and worse — and how one might talk about such a thing without being dumb about it. Or to put it another way, to talk about such a thing without falling into what the intellectual historian David Hollinger calls the “booster-bigot trap,” in which discussions of “exceptionalism” become either uncritical forms of praise or uncritical forms of bigotry. As someone who has a complex sense of what it means to be Jew-ish (I am neither totally comfortable identifying as a Jew, nor comfortable not identifying as one — it all depends on the context in which the identity is being deployed and whether it is being thrust onto me versus how I would regard it), I feel like I have a vantage point that is perhaps a bit more useful for these discussions than people who feel either unambiguously Jewish or not Jewish.
Anyway, my point is that I decided that I had about as much right to talk about this as anybody else did, and had perspectives on this as a historian that would be perhaps interesting to a wide variety of people who would be interested in the topic.
The description of the course follows:
Jewish Intellectuals and the Birth of the Nuclear Era
Dr. Alex Wellerstein
Tuesdays/Thursdays, 6:30-7:45pm (on Zoom)
January 7, 9, 14, 16, 21, and 23, 2025Despite their minority status, intellectuals, scientists, and strategists of Jewish descent had an outsized impact on many key historical events and debates in the history of nuclear weapons during World War II and the Cold War. Beginning with the rise of Jewish prominence in theoretical physics in the early 1900s, the course tracks the key figures, ethical debates, and geopolitical influences of Jewish scientists on the creation, proliferation, and plans for the use of nuclear weapons.
Topics will include: the pivotal role of Jewish physicists in the origins of the American and British nuclear programs during World War II; the ethical, moral, and political challenges faced by figures like J. Robert Oppenheimer; the contrasting worldviews of Edward Teller and Leo Szilard in the early Cold War; and the role that Jewish intellectuals played in both planning for and resisting nuclear war in the later Cold War.
The course will also examine the intersection of Jewish identity, the Holocaust, and the existential threat posed by nuclear war, as well as the involvement of Jewish figures in Israel's nuclear program and its implications for global non-proliferation efforts. Ultimately, the course will be exploring why Jewish thought and experiences—particularly those shaped by persecution, displacement, and survival—had a disproportionate impact on some of the most consequential developments of the atomic age, shaping both the scientific community and the ethical discourse surrounding nuclear weapons.
Again, if that sounds interesting to you, as far as I know there are still some slots open. If you are interested in possibly signing up, you can do so here. You are under no obligation whatsoever! Thanks.