This talk will focus on the intersection of race and nuclear weapons. I will provide an overview of my research and book, which examines Black activists who fought for nuclear disarmament, often connecting the nuclear issue with the fight for racial equality and liberation movements around the world. In addition, I will discuss the current situation and the juxtaposition of having over one hundred nations, many who are from the Global South, leading the fight for a world free of nuclear weapons while a new arms race has begun.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Vincent Intondi is a non-resident scholar at Cornell University’s Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. A nuclear disarmament expert whose research focuses on the intersection of race and nuclear weapons, from 2023-2024, Intondi was a senior lecturer in the International Relations department at Webster University-Leiden in the Netherlands. From 2013-2023, Intondi was a full professor of history and founder and director of the Institute for Race, Justice, and Civic Engagement at Montgomery College in Takoma Park, Maryland. Prior to teaching at Montgomery College, Intondi served as director of research for American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute in Washington, DC, and was an associate professor of history at Seminole State College in Sanford, Florida. Intondi is the author of African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement (Stanford University Press) and Saving the World from Nuclear War: The June 12, 1982, Disarmament Rally and Beyond (Johns Hopkins University Press). Intondi regularly works with organizations exploring ways to include more diverse voices in the nuclear disarmament movement and is the co-host of the Minds Blown podcast. His current research examines the role of Africa in the nuclear disarmament movement.