Student Pugwash Confronts The Challenges Of Growth

With larger membership come questions of how the group can best serve the needs of its expanded constituency When approximately 40 undergraduate and graduate students meet this coming weekend on the campus of Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh to discuss military and environmental security, they will be advancing the goals of a movement that has sprouted across the nation in recent years. The event is a regional conference sponsored by Student Pugwash USA, a society whose name is still unfamiliar enough to bring giggles and questioning looks on many campuses, although the group has been in existence for more than a decade. Student Pugwash - a nonpartisan movement aimed at fostering an understanding of science's social and ethical dimensions - has quietly but steadily grown from a loosely organized community of individuals to an extensive network of chapters at universities and some high schools. When it was launched in 1979, Student Pugwash was merely a gathering of about 100 students and professionals with an interest in discussing the interrelationship of science and society. Today the network has metamorphosed into an international society, with a total mailing list of about 5,000 people. Accompanying this growth has been a series of new challenges for the group, as its board, staffers, and chapter representatives wrestle with questions of how to balance Student Pugwash's increased size and diversity with its customary role as a facilitator of discussions and edu- cational activities. The board members and the staff at the Washington, D.C., national office must find a balance between organizing programs for the student constituency and allowing the individual chapters to plan their own events, with the board and staff "taking a back seat and giving them advice," says Kathryn Janda, conference coordinator at the national office. Although the group may be changing, Student Pugwash's goals remain the same as they were 11 years ago. "It's an awareness group," says Charles Chung, a 20-year-old physics and environmental studies major active in the University of Pennsylvania Chapter. "It encourages people to come together and discuss science and technology. We try to get everyone's opinions; that has a value in its own right." Notable is Student Pugwash's knack for "getting the pulse of [an issue] before it gets taken up by the media," says Kathy Harrison, one of the younger members of the Student Pugwash board. Harrison, who cofounded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Chapter while getting a master's degree in chemical engineering, is now a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of British Columbia. The 1979 conference, for example, featured a working group on in vitro fertilization, years before New Jersey's celebrated Baby M surrogate mother court case. At the 1983 Student Pugwash conference - more than a year before President Reagan mentioned "Star Wars" on television - a working group discussed space-based laser weapons. "The organization provides a unique function in dealing with issues not addressed by the traditional curriculum," says Rosemary Chalk, study director for the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy. Because courses that deal with the interdependency of science and society do not exist at many campuses, students who are interested in exploring these issues traditionally have had "no opportunity for identifying [resource] people, or paths they might pursue," says Chalk, one of the senior professionals asked to serve on the Student Pugwash board to give the group an intergenerat-ional perspective. "Student Pugwash has attempted to fill that gap. It has become a network of students who share these concerns." Student Pugwash takes its name from the Pugwash society of senior scientists, scholars, and diplomats, many of whom are advisers to the world's heads of state.The senior Pugwash group was established in 1957 in the fishing village of Pugwash, Nova Scotia, in response to a plea from Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell to educate humankind on the dangers of nuclear war. The senior Pugwashites, representing a variety of political viewpoints, meet to discuss the complex problems facing humanity. Occasionally after the Pugwash conferences, senior Pugwashites lobby their national governments to implement policies suggested in Pugwash resolutions. Previous Pugwash discussions have aided in negotiations on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1968, the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT), and the end of the Vietnam War. Student Pugwash is the brainchild of Jeffrey Leifer, who, as an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego, convinced the senior Pugwashites to let him become the first student delegate to attend their annual conferences in 1977 and 1978. Although not a science student himself, Leifer had long been interested in the importance of social responsibility in the pursuit of science; his father, Herbert Leifer, a physicist now at Rockwell International's Los Angeles facility, has focused his research on weapon systems. "I grew up with science," says the former UC-San Diego student, now an investment banker. Inspired by what he witnessed at the senior Pugwash conferences, Jeffrey Leifer believed it was important for science and society issues to be discussed by the world's future leaders "when they're developing, rather than when they're old and eminent," explains Kathryn Janda, conference coordinator at Student Pugwash USA's Washington, D.C., office. So he obtained permission from senior Pugwash's Geneva office "to use the name and the idea" for a conference of his own, says Janda, who now organizes Student Pugwash confabs as a paid staffer at the group's national office. Leifer's goals were modest at first. "I didn't want to start a movement; I just wanted to hold a conference," he says. But the first Student Pugwash meeting, held in San Diego in 1979 and funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, filled a void for many of the participants. It was such a success that a second confab was organized two years later; the international conference is now a regular biannual occurrence. The initial Student Pugwash conference resulted in the publication of senior and student participants' papers in a book, Science and Ethical Responsibility (Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley, 1979). "The publisher was interested only in the senior papers," says David Leifer, brother of Jeffrey Leifer, who served as Student Pugwash's executive director from 1983-85 and is now a board member. "But we said, `You either use them together [with the students' papers] or not at all.' " David Leifer, now a Los Angeles lawyer, has been instrumental in obtaining funding for Student Pugwash over the years, a task that is not always easy. "We're everything funders aren't interested in," says his brother, Jeffrey Leifer. "We're long-range and educational in our approach." The group has obtained funding for its biannual conferences from the National Science Foundation's Ethics and Values in Science and Technology program, David Leifer says, with the universities that host the confabs contributing "either in-kind services or actual cash." Additional funding for the group has come from the Rockefeller, Sloan, Carnegie, and MacArthur foundations. Recent corporate supporters include Apple Computer Corp., Ciba-Geigy Corp., and Merck and Co. And the students themselves have also chipped in with donations. Physicist Herbert Leifer is proud of the group his sons founded. "They were deadly serious about this thing," he says. "They wanted it to succeed, and they believed it had merit." The elder Leifer, who has attended several Student Pugwash international conferences, says "the excitement of the early meetings was really a high," with students' enthusiasm fueled by "the opportunity to get involved in addressing the world's problems. "I'm pleased that [Student Pugwash] didn't fall apart" after its founders went on to professional careers, Herbert Leifer says. "But I'm really not awfully surprised" that the group is still in existence, he says. "People are willing to work with it." --B.S. After a decade of existence, that network has expanded to include a number of high-powered alumni. Many of the young professionals who involved themselves in Student Pugwash as undergraduates or graduate students have now assumed key positions in industry, government, and academia, and are able to impress upon others their beliefs regarding the socially responsible use of science and technology. Michael Berger, for example - a delegate to the first Student Pugwash conference - is now a Navy analyst at the Congressional Budget Office; and Eymert den Oudsten, who helped create a Student Pugwash group in the Netherlands, is now working toward the 1992 economic unification of the European Community as secretary-general of the European Movement in the Netherlands. Other former Student Pugwashites have taken jobs at leading firms like IBM and AT&T Bell Laboratories or have gone on to become tenure-track faculty at institutions such as Princeton University, the University of Massachusetts, and Middlebury College. The issue of careers is one that the movement is now addressing. Its publication New Careers, now in its third edition, includes information about opportunities in more than 15 cities throughout the U.S. As the group's constituency moves from university studies to the world of commerce, more and more Student Pugwashites are wondering, "How do you use your talents in a way that you can be proud of?" says Janda, who, like the other staffers at the Student Pugwash national office, is a recent graduate. But making an effort to address questions like this means a shift in direction for Student Pugwash, Chalk says, one that "the office and board haven't thought through carefully yet." The evolution of the primarily student-based organization into a new careers program "would mean a different set of activities," the board member says. "If the resources are limited, we have to make choices" about the focus of the group, she says. Student Pugwash must now examine "the role of the organization as a convener versus as a service organization," to determine whether it would be best to concentrate on programs and conferences or to strengthen its relationships with career-placement offices, faculty advisers, and others who can provide resources to its constitutents. The movement, which takes its name from the 33-year-old Pugwash society of senior scientists and diplomats, was founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Leifer, then a student at the University of California, San Diego (see accompanying story). Student Pugwash's biannual international conferences bring student delegates together with elder statesmen and stateswomen from government, academia, and business. "We think it's important for people with technical backgrounds to meld these backgrounds with a social agenda - to grapple with the effects of their work on society at a young age," Leifer says. "They have the right - and the responsibility - to join with the experts in addressing these problems." Not everyone is enamored of Student Pugwash, however. Before the group's biannual conference in Ann Arbor, Mich., in 1983, right-wing radical Lyndon LaRouche circulated a flyer headed "Stop the `Pugwash' Brainwash," condemning both Student Pugwash and senior Pugwash. The leaflet termed the conference "an effort by the international oligarch who run the `nuclear freeze' movement and its kook/cult controllers to fuel a radical anti-technology movement in the United States." Along with each biannual conference comes the formation of new groups in new nations, as international conferees go back to their homes and start their own Student Pugwash - or, as it is called in some countries, Young Pugwash. There are now about 10 or 15 of these international groups. Other than coming together every two years for the conference, the international Student/Young Pugwash groups have no formal tie. "We're more of a coalition" than an organization, says Janda. Some groups are composed primarily of young professionals rather than students. Some, unlike Student Pugwash USA, charge membership fees; others, such as the Canadian group, are fully funded by the government. In 1982, Student Pugwash USA metamorphosed from an aggregation of students who met for biannual conferences to a more structured group. The Washington office was opened; a newsletter, Tough Questions, was founded; and chapters were organized. The movement now has 25 established chapters, and Sandy Ionno, national student activities coordinator predicts that another 10 to 15 will be organized by the end of this semester. "We get four to five requests every week from students interested in starting a chapter," she says. The chapters, she says, range in size from "a small core of very interested people" at some campuses to "60 to 75 regular people [attending] meetings" at others. Ionno estimates that 65 percent to 75 percent of the Student Pugwashites nationwide are science and engineering students, but she notes that business and humanities students are also drawn to the movement. Although the senior Pugwash society served as the model for Student Pugwash, the younger group differs somewhat in purpose from its elder. While senior Pugwashites issue resolutions after their conferences, "we don't try to reach any sort of consensus," says Janda. "With students, it's not useful to make the sort of compromises necessary to come up with a statement." Rather, she says, the student group views its discussions as "an educational experience, to [show] what the different points of view are." As the movement has evolved, says executive director Betsy Fader, the board of directors "has gone through somewhat of a metamorphosis." Initially, she says, it consisted of "a handful of mostly young people who were instrumental in founding the group." Recently, however, it has been expanded in size and has become more diverse, now comprising 17 members representing various age groups and fields of interest. While still including young professionals, it now also boasts a number of scientists and engineers (including polio vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk), several individuals with experience in dealing with foundations, and a student representative. The group's "complexity and ambiguity," says Robin Wagner, a founder of both the MIT Chapter and a chapter at Johns Hopkins University, "is one of our greatest strengths - but also one of the great weaknesses for making people aware of us." Board member Peter Carpenter, a vice president of the California pharmaceutical firm Alza Corp. who also does work for several public-policy organizations, concurs. Student Pugwash, he says, has "avoided taking an advocacy position on issues, other than on trying to bridge the gap between science and society. That tends to be a bit frustrating for those of us who tend to like closure." Panelists at Student Pugwash events are chosen to represent a balanced set of perspectives. A London program held in February, cosponsored by Student Pugwash USA and British Pugwash, exemplifies this philosophy. The program focused on the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb in the 1940s. A debate forum convened as part of the program included senior Pugwash president Joseph Rotblat - a physicist who worked on the project but resigned when it became clear that Germany was not developing a nuclear weapon - and Sir Rudolf Peierls, a former chairman of the senior Pugwash Council. Peierls also worked on the Manhattan Project and stayed until the bomb's completion. Although Student Pugwash members bend over backward to emphasize the movement's nonpartisan orientation, the group has trouble attracting more students because "a lot of people are afraid to do anything unusual; they think it would look bad on their resume," says Wagner, who has a master's degree in technology and policy from MIT and is now a Ph.D. candidate in Johns Hopkins' program in Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology. "Asking questions about the status quo is often considered to be liberal," she laments. Another obstacle to greater participation is general student apathy. At a recent regional conference for Student Pugwash chapters in the mid-Atlantic states, says the University of Pennsylvania's Charles Chung, "every chapter came forward and said that apathy was a big problem on their campus." Despite heavy publicity for the chapters' activities, Chung says, many of the campus groups had trouble attracting more than 20 students to their programs. Participation in Student Pugwash's international conference Chung, "every chapter came forward and said that apathy was a big problem on their campus." Despite heavy publicity for the chapters' activities, Chung says, many of the campus groups had trouble attracting more than 20 students to their programs. Participation in Student Pug-wash's international conferences, as in senior Pugwash's, is by invitation only. Approximately 250 students applied for about 100 spots at the 1989 converence in Boulder, Colo. Student applicants submit a transcript, two letters of recommendation, an essay, and an abstract of the presentation they propose to give at the conference. Senior participants at Student Pugwash conferences also must be invited to attend. "We try to get an ethicist or philosopher in every working session," Janda says. Plans for the 1991 international conference are now under way; campuses in the South and the Midwest are being considered as conference sites. Although the senior participants at Student Pugwash include the world's scientific and political heavyweights, "the students get right into the middle of [the discussions]," says Harrison. "You don't have to be an expert to have a perfectly valid opinion." At Student Pugwash events, the students "feel empowered to take a stand and say what they have to say. They have a lot to offer," says board member David Leifer, an attorney and brother of the movement's founder. The group makes an effort to tailor its discussions to the geographic location of its conferences. Its 1979 San Diego conference focused on defense systems, developed largely in California; its 1983 conference in Ann Arbor dealt with robotics, a topic of concern to auto industry workers in nearby Detroit; and its 1985 gathering in Princeton featured discussions of the ideals of Albert Einstein, a former Princeton resident. In addition to its work in organizing the international conferences, Student Pugwash USA sponsors smaller regional gatherings, such as this weekend's event at Carnegie-Mellon. The group also hosts an event called Pugwashington, a week-long visit by about 15 students to the nation's capital and its numerous policy organizations. Its ability to bring together students with a common interest is one of the main advantages of Student Pugwash cited by those who are actively involved. Hopkins' Wagner says her activity with the movement "has been one of the best experiences of my life. You think you're examining abstract issues, but you're finding a community of friends that can last a lifetime who want to make the world a better place. "We're not afraid to ask the tough questions," says the grad student, who also serves on the Student Pugwash board. "We think there are improvements that can be made." For more information on Student Pugwash USA, contact the group's national headquarters at 1638 R St., N.W., Suite 32, Washington, D.C. 20009; (202) 328-6555.

Student Pugwash Confronts The Challenges Of Growth

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