Nuclear Weapons in the University Classroom

A teaching reference for faculty who want to develop or improve course offerings on nuclear weapons and arms control as part of an interdisciplinary curriculum geared toward undergraduates. The first chapter presents a survey of 75 university courses based on analysis of data gleaned from relevant syllabi up to mid-1987. It assesses the relative degrees of emphasis accorded to technological, political, and ethical issues in existing university course offerings. Findings concerning the frequency of team teaching, guest lectures, and the relationships between multidisciplinary teaching approaches and individual topics (e.g. nuclear ethics, the arms race, strategic doctrine, etc.) are also presented. The second chapter discusses the political science underpinnings of coursework on nuclear weapons and evaluates the extent to which political analysis can contribute to a better understanding of the arms race, arms control, and strategic doctrine. The third chapter looks at the challenges of teaching about nuclear weapons from the perspective of a sociologist, giving special emphasis to how the issues of value choice and cultural awareness can be factored into coursework. The fourth chapter presents a selected unannotated bibliography of over 800 required readings and films, compiled from the 75 syllabi studied in chapter 1. The list itself is broken down into 20 categories and the frequency with which individual texts and films are used is noted.