For Immediate Release
April 20, 2001

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. — More than two dozen leading international scholars will gather at Mount Holyoke College April 27 through 29 for "Weapons of Mass Destruction: Diverse Ethical Perspectives," a conference focusing on the ethics of developing and distributing nuclear, chemical, biological, and other weapons of mass destruction.

Opening the conference will be a public symposium, "Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Continuing Debate," to be held in Gamble Auditorium on Thursday, April 26, at 7:30 PM. Taking part will be Steven Lee, the author of "Morality, Prudence, and Nuclear Weapons;" Kanti Bajpai, one of India's most prominent antinuclear activists and scholars; Lucinda Peach, whose work focuses on feminist theories and military issues; and Michael Walzer, whose book "Just and Unjust Wars" has been a standard text on college campuses for two decades. Each speaker will have 15 minutes to address the same set of questions, after which the floor will be open to discussion among the panelists and questions from the audience.

The conference has been organized by the Ethikon Institute, a nonprofit organization that prepares conferences on moral issues of global concern and publishes the proceedings. Support for the conference is provided by the College's Weissman Center for Leadership and the Dean of Faculty's office. Sohail Hashmi, newly named associate professor of international relations at Mount Holyoke College and a leading scholar in the field of Islamic politics and ethics, was instrumental in bringing the conference to the College.

Among the timely topics to be discussed are the end of the Cold War and proliferation of nuclear weapons in South Asia; the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons, a topic frequently overshadowed by the concentration on nuclear weapons; and non-Western ethical perspectives on the post-Cold War world. While the April 26 symposium is open to the public, the conference is open to invited participants only. Among the perspectives to be applied to the dialogue are international law, feminism, Hinduism, pacifism, Confucianism, Judaism, and liberalism. Approximately 30 scholars are expected to take part.

"I am thrilled that this conference is being held at Mount Holyoke," Hashmi said. "The question of what role ethical debate plays in the proliferation or nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction is an old one, with roots in 19^th-century efforts to control the use of chemical weapons. But since the demise of the Cold War, we see much less of such ethical debate or discussion, in spite of the fact that control of weapons of mass destruction remains a vital international concern.

"We are very fortunate to have some of the most renowned scholars in the field of ethics and weapons of mass destruction attending this conference. They are women and men who significantly influenced the Cold War debate as well as those who are shaping the post-Cold War discussion," said Hashmi.

Hashmi is the author of "The Islamic Ethics of War and Peace," which is currently making the rounds of publishers. The book evaluates classical and contemporary Islamic perspectives on international relations. In it Hashmi examines ideas of jihad, or "just war," the ethics of nuclear deterrence, and intervention in cases of massive violations of human rights. Questions about the compatibility of classical and modern Islamic theory with the contemporary international system, and the ramifications of Muslim accommodations to this system, are discussed within the framework of historical examples, including the Arab-Israeli dispute, the Iran-Iraq war, and the Persian Gulf war.