In response to:

A Modest Proposal from the July 16, 1981 issue

To the Editors:

This is a thank you note to the editors and an invitation to your readers. Last July, when I read the article by George Kennan, “A Modest Proposal” [NYR, July 16], I was deeply disturbed and spent the rest of the summer quietly thinking about the danger of nuclear war, wondering what to do. By the fall I had decided that I must spend at least one day of every week working for nuclear disarmament. This has been hard, but facing up to the danger feels better than not. So thank you and George Kennan for that.

With a few notable exceptions, social scientists have been rather quiescent on the threat of nuclear war. Now a group of us have planned a Conference, Social Scientists and Nuclear War. This is a meeting for serious people who really want to figure out what they can do. We will have an array of speakers (Elise Boulding, Morton Deutsch, Robert Jay Lifton, Eqbal Ahmad, David Hawkins, Edward S. Herman, and Zhores Medvedev among them); a number of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will participate; there will be many small seminars and workshops, and planning for future work.

The meetings will be at the Graduate Center of City University, beginning at 9:30 AM, June 4th, 5th, and 6th. For further information write: Social Scientists and Nuclear War, Graduate Center—CUNY, 33 West 42nd St., New York, New York 10036. Or phone 212-662-5897 or 201-944-0528. Please come.

Howard E. Gruber

Rutgers University

Newark, New Jersey

This Issue

June 10, 1982