FALL 2023

Second Annual Ellsberg Lecture

The Madness of Militarism

Past Events

At a time of severe crises that span from local communities to national governance, faraway wars, a global climate emergency, and heightened dangers of nuclear war, clarity is daunting and essential. What Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism” has worsened in recent decades, with countless cascading effects. In this lecture, Norman Solomon offers an overview of present-day U.S. militarism, its consequences, and possibilities for overcoming its pervasive effects.

Blowing the Whistle on Drone Warfare

This hybrid event included a screening of the film National Bird (2016) followed by a panel discussion about the dangers of drone warfare. The speakers included:

  • Sonia Kennebeck, an award-winning director, producer, and investigative journalist.

  • Lisa Ling, a veteran of the U.S. Army drone program and a whistleblower. She is currently a research fellow at the Disruption Network Institute. 

  • Jesselyn Radack, an attorney and Director of the Whistleblower and Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts.  

Nuclear Truth Telling

In Memory of Daniel Ellsberg

This webinar featured leading antinuclear activists about the ongoing threats posed by nuclear weapons and the need collective efforts to reduce those dangers and move toward nuclear abolition. The speakers included:

  • Ira Hefland, of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

  • Cynthia Lazaroff, a Founder of both Women Transforming our Nuclear Legacy and NuclearWakeUpCall.Earth

  • Susi Snyder, author, speaker, and Programme Coordinator at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons 

FALL 2022

Inaugural Ellsberg Lecture

The Human Toll of America’s Air Wars

In recent American wars, the United States traded many of its troops on the ground for an arsenal of aircraft, high flying drones, and precision weapons, often directed by controllers thousands of miles away. Successive U.S. administrations have boasted America’s air wars are the “most precise” in the history of warfare, replete with pledges of transparency and accountability. Investigative reporter Azmat Khan set out to test those claims on the ground in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, and within confidential troves of documents she obtained through years-long lawsuits against the Department of Defense. In this lecture, Khan detailed the culmination of her findings and the pattern of impunity within this new way of war.

Azmat Khan is a Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter whose work grapples with the human costs of war. She is a writer for the New York Times Magazine, a Carnegie Fellow, and the Birch Assistant Professor at Columbia Journalism School, where she also leads the Li Center for Global Journalism. Khan is writing a book for Random House investigating America’s air wars. Her multi-part series in the New York Times, “The Civilian Casualty Files,” was awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting. The project was the culmination of more than five years of Khan’s reporting, including ground investigation at the sites of more than 100 civilian casualty incidents in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, more than 1,300 formerly secret military records she obtained in a legal battle with the Pentagon, and scores of interviews with military and local sources.