In April 2023, the Truman Center hosted a two-day Nuclear Policy Workshop in Atlanta that brought together 19 undergraduate students from the Metro Atlanta region to engage with experts in nuclear security, all part of Truman’s efforts to diversify the nuclear security field. The workshop was the second of its kind this year, following the Midwestern Nuclear Policy Workshop in Chicago in January, and was led by Truman’s Janne E. Nolan Nuclear Security Fellow, Lily Wojtowicz. The workshop began on Friday, April 14th with welcoming remarks from Jon Temin, Truman’s Vice President of Policy and Programs, followed by a presentation by Dr. Dan Altman, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University, on “The Dawn of the Nuclear Age and Nonproliferation.” Dr. Altman provided a big-picture overview of the nuclear age and the broad nonproliferation regime.

The second day began with an interactive presentation by Ms. Wojtowicz on “Deterrence, Allies, and Crises,” which discussed the ways in which crises impact broader U.S. foreign policy goals vis-a-vis deterrence and alliance management, and was followed by the students putting their new knowledge into practice via a crisis scenario on a hypothetical case of proliferation in East Asia. The students then engaged in a virtual panel, “Career Paths in Nuclear Policy and Advocacy,” that featured Mari Faines, Global Zero’s Partner for Mobilization, and Navindra Gunawardena, the National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center’s Strategy Management Officer. Both speakers discussed their own career paths and the professional and educational opportunities that facilitated their trajectory, and responded to students’ questions on topics including work-life balance and resume building.

Following the virtual panel, Jasmine Owens, Physicians for Social Responsibility’s Associate Director of the Nuclear Weapons Abolition Program, led a session on “Building a Nuclear Weapons-Free World: Intersectionality, Grassroots Organizing, and Advocacy for Nuclear Abolition.” Ms. Owens connected the nuclear weapons complex to concrete health and security impacts on Americans. The final session was led by Dr. Jana Wattenberg, UKRI Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in Security at Aberystwyth University, who examined gender and nuclear weapons in an interactive presentation that focused on the gendered lenses through which we study nuclear weapons and assess the individuals working in the field.