In November 2004, a delegation of NWIP students from Europe visited several Universities in the Midwest, working together with Su students to set up dialgoues and workshops on nuclear abolition.

Below you will find some impressions and photos

Introduction

Martina Grosch:

At the IPPNW World Congress in Beijing in September 2004 NWIP, Nuclear Weapons Inheritance Project, came in contact with a PSR student Christopher Brubaker that showed serious interest in helping us arrange a delegation to the US, which then would be the first NWIP delegation going to medical schools in the US.

After coming home from the Congress our contact person for the US Rune Dahl and Chris in Cincinnati both put into a lot of hard work into preparing the delegation. The dates were set to the 5-12^th of November. The universities we would visit were planned by Chris and were planned to be three universities in Ohio; Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio State University, Columbus and University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati and Indiana University, Indianapolis, in Indiana, and University of Kentucky, Lexington, in Kentucky. Us that went on the delegation were Caecilie Buhmann(Denmark), Rune Dahl(Norway), Martina Grosch(Sweden) and Camilla Mattson(Sweden).

Preparation process

Rune Dahl, NWIP-contact for the US:

The preparations took a lot of time, and keeping that in mind, I dare not even think how it would have been without having the fantastic Chris as our contact-person.

Having said that, I must say that overall the preparation process ran quite smoothly, especially when considering how little time we had. Being the first delegation for me to coordinate, I probably jazzed myself up more than necessary from time to time, and this perhaps increased  my stress-factor substantially.

Chris Brubaker, National Student Representative, Physicians for Social responsibility, US:

Preparing a visit for a delegation was a lot of work, mostly time spent finding contacts at the different medical schools, communicating with them, and following up on details. Some time was spent finding housing, but I was fortunate to have friends that were able to help.

The messages I gave the different schools advertised an event with European medical students who were here to have a dialogue about nuclear weapons, and had a sentence about ‘people who don’t agree are encouraged to come,” but that is clearly inadequate. It was also clear that email and a few posters is not sufficient to get Western medical students to attend a controversial event outside of class hours.

The team ended up visiting 5 schools, and the amount of work to make this happen smoothly, from finding contacts, establishing venues and housing, ensuring advertising, and ordering food, took more time than anticipated. I was glad to have more flexibility in my research schedule than most medical students, and I doubt that medical students in the U.S. would have the time to set up and pull off a similar trip.

The goals before the trip were to set up dialogues for mixed audiences in as many medical schools as possible and hold a training at the end.

Start of delegation

Martina Grosch:

When arriving in Cincinnati I was so excited and overwhelmed by the fact that I was on my first delegation. It felt especially important as the election had been just 3 days prior to our coming and been on every ones mind, including mine, during the weeks before the election.

Chris, a good friend since the Congress in Beijing, picked me up at the airport and brought me to his house, where Camilla and Rune already were waiting. It was great to see each other again, after just having communicated over email since Beijing. The reason I bring these thoughts and feelings up regarding being friends is that it is an important part of going on a delegation and what makes good work and good results come out of it. You are among friends, not only colleges.

We were going to start our week by holding a training for interested students at the University of Cincinnati. From previous experience that NWIP has made we know that ideally a training should be at the end of a delegation, so that all students met during dialogues can attend the training and learn more to become more involved. Due to when we could come and when the different universities would have us the training during this dialogue was held in the beginning of the delegation.

Training and dialogues

1. Training at University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio on the 7^th of November 2004 (attending 8)

Camilla Mattson:

The first day in the US we spent on preparing for the training day we started our work in the US with. Even though I tried to prepare in a good way, I’m not at all happy with my presentation during the training. I was responsible for the Health and Security workshop, and I didn’t manage to present the Model of change or the Security discussion very well. I think I was too nervous. I should have asked more before the workshop so that I would have been clearer on what the purpose with the models and discussions were. One thing that also made it difficult was a professor in the audience who talked a lot and easy ended up in a two person-conversation. I found it difficult to handle him without being rude, but fortunately, I got help from some of the American students.

In total, I must say that I think we did a good workshop, anyway, especially if you consider that this was our first real try. In the future, I would like to make it more interactive and more fun, some parts of the day were a bit boring the way we did it. Our solution to that was breaks with birthday cake, and that worked as well to cheer things up a bit…

Martina Grosch:

On the next day we started our work with preparing the training we were going to have on Sunday the 7^th at the University of Cincinnati. After some hours of preparing Caecilie arrived and had some suggestions on how to make the training more worth while for the students. The training on Sunday went basically very well. The students that came were very interested in discussing the issues. Most of them were PSR students and they already had a basic knowledge of these questions.

My parts of the training were the medical effects and alternatives. For medical effects I had prepared both the basics about the different medical effects; pressure wave, heat wave, radiation, both short and long term effects, and electromagnetic wave. I had also prepared an article about a potential nuclear weapons explosion in New York and the outcome of that.

The alternatives part of the discussion was the end of our training. I started it with asking the students to discuss in small groups how to reach the goal global disarmament if having the common vision of a nuclear weapons free world. I asked them to try to think of working at different levels, first how to raise public awareness and then how to influence the decision makers. And finally how to go from convinced decision makers to global disarmament. I might have let the discussions in the groups take a little too long time, but at that point the students were very tired and needed to have time discuss with each other. It is important at this point to have NWIP-students in the groups to make sure that the discussions in the groups  stay on track, and especially that no good innovative ideas get lost.

Rune Dahl:

Overall I think we did ok, but with a lot of room for improvement. But, for us “newcomers” to run a workshop without “the vets” in charge, for the first time, we didn’t do half-bad. The workshop went quite smoothly, and it worked fine with having Caecilie sitting among the audience, helping out when we “called” for it.

There was a “difficult” person in the audience, sort of a “meeting destroyer”, and this made the training an extra good learning experience for us. At least for Camilla, who was the one who had to deal with him, which she did in a nice and non-confrontational matter.

The Health & Security part was good, although perhaps we should focus more on differentiating social and military security. I have to say I feel a bit ashamed that it ended up with Camilla doing this part, when it was I who was supposed to do it. So, kudos to Camilla for doing it, even though she hadn’t prepared it, and I think she did very well.

I feel I have learned and understood the essence of this workshop now, and I feel more comfortable with the thought of doing it in the future.

One thing I think we should work on with it, is the transition between it and the Nuclear Weapons, which might have been a little bit difficult to see during our training.

Doing the NW-basics I felt it didn’t go too badly, and I think I, at least partly, managed the challenge of keeping the overview of all the different issues.

It took me too long, though, to reach the main points, and I fell for the temptation of referring to Caecilie too often.

I used the Nuclear Posture Review as an example of both vertical and horizontal proliferation, and that worked out quite good, but being in the US, I also should have used the NMD as an example to explain proliferation, which I didn’t. The NMD was something the students asked about, and I should perhaps have spent more time on discussing it.

One trap I walked straight into was how to make the NPT more efficient. I found out I didn’t have a good answer to this, apart from strengthening international cooperation. How to sanction violators led me straight into the trap of what happened in Iraq, and I feel this is something I need to discuss more with you guys..

The alternatives-part didn’t go exactly as planned or how it has been done before, but I think the group-discussions were fruitful in a different, and even better way, and I think Martina adjusted to it nicely. It was very educative in the way that we got a glimpse into the American way, and how the students thought one most efficiently could influence the common American, when the society is structured the way it is today.

2. Dialogue at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio on the 8^th of November 2004 (attending 17)

Martina Grosch:

The first dialogue we had the day after the training. All of us were nervous as it was going to be our first dialogue. Camilla was going to be chair and Rune and I prepared arguments. In retrospect I realize how we should have prepared and that this was what Caecilie tried to do. But because of us being not very experienced we just learned our arguments by heart and were not prepared to really dialogue.

What we realized half way through the dialogue was that the audience we had were agreeing with us that nuclear weapons are a bad thing but we were not experienced enough to adjust our arguments accordingly.

After the dialogue we continued talking to two girls about to adjust our method to the American audience.

Camilla Mattson:

When it comes to our first dialogue, I feel embarrassed only to think of it. I was supposed to be the chair, and I was very nervous about it. I hadn’t seen a real dialogue before, and I hadn’t understood how a dialogue was supposed to be. It ended up being more of a lecture, where I knew what arguments Martina had prepared and what arguments Rune had (and their arguments were more of presentations) and then we just ran through them. The audience wasn’t at all what we had expected, we thought we would have to argue with them, and they turned out to have more or less the same view on nuclear weapons as we had. At least they seemed to be against them, but if we had asked them more deeply what they thought of it, we might have found points where they had other opinions. However, the best thing with this first dialogue is that I’ll never have to do my first dialogue again, and that we learnt a lot of things that helped us to prepare for the dialogues that followed later in the week. One very basic thing to keep in mind is that the chair must stand so that he/she can see the other delegates…

Rune Dahl:

This was our first dialogue, and although we got to say what we had prepared and planned to say, it didn’t go particularly well. We had troubles making the dialogue run smoothly, since we didn’t really respond to the issues brought up by the audience, but instead got too hung up on our prepared arguments.

Chris here forwarded the idea that we should put more emphasis on explaining why we as medical students in the rest of the world are so concerned about these Nuclear Weapons.

He thought American students would be impressed if we said something like this: “We come from countries without NW, and we see these weapons as such a threat to the world. We are here because we don’t have an influence, and we want to influence you to make a difference!”

One of the students thought that a more effective way to reach out to more students, and especially to the ones that do not agree with us, was to arrange the dialogue as a lunch-time debate, where we i.e. could try to get republican medical students debating against us.

3. Dialogues at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio at the 9^th of November 2004 (attending 1) and at Indiana University, Indianapolis, Indiana at the 10^th of November (attending 5)

Rune Dahl:

On both these dialogues we were unfortunate with low attendance. We still had good discussions with the few that showed up, especially in Indianapolis, where we were joined by a professor in history. We got to practise to talk our arguments through and sharpen them, and we also talked about how so few had showed up, and what we could do differently in the future.

Camilla Mattson:

There is not much to say about the next two dialogues we had, since there were very few participants. We got a chance to practice our roles, so when it was time for our fourth dialogue, in Cincinnati, we were all good prepared.

Martina Grosch:

The two dialogues with so few students coming were a bit sad and frustrating. We had learned so much from the first dialogue in Cleveland and would have liked to talk to a larger audience. Talking to fewer but very enthusiastic students strengthened us in our conviction that disarmament work is important also in the US, but to reach the people we would like to reach in the US we have to use a somewhat different method in the future.

4. Dialogue at University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio on the 11^th of November 2004 (attending 16)

Camilla Mattson:

During the dialogue in Cincinnati I was the chair again, but this time we had changed the role of the chair a bit. We did this because we talked to a small number of students, and the need to have a strict structure wasn’t as big as when you have a dialogue with 50-100 students. We had the rule that the one who was chair was the one who made the introduction and the first questions, as well as the one responsible for how the dialogue was moving on and summarising what had been said. But everybody could answer to questions, and the chair didn’t give the word to the others. This was in order to make the dialogue more dynamic and interactive. I think this worked well, even though I had the feeling that I was talking a bit too much. In total, I was very happy with our performance during the dialogue in Cincinnati, and I think this was the first time I really felt that dialogue is an effective technique to use. I had to leave right after the dialogue, which was a bit of a disappointment since we had started an interesting discussion with the students. I left with a good feeling, though, a feeling of having achieved something during our first delegation in the US. I look forward to go on my next delegation!

Rune Dahl:

I think this was a quite good dialogue, where we did it the way we had talked about, and got to use what we had practised on earlier in the week. We took use of the blackboard more than earlier to visualize things, and although it looked a bit chaotic, it worked well.

Although here, as in the other places, almost all the students agreed with us, I think we here too fast jumped to the conclusion that everybody did. There was at least one student, which I talked to afterwards, we could have gone into more discussion with.

One of the students brought forward the idea of getting nuclear issues incorporated in the curriculum. A very good idea, but obviously not something NWIP can take on, but rather for the students to work on locally.

5. Dialogue at University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky at the 12^th of November 2004 (attending 14)

Rune Dahl:

This dialogue was not half-bad either, although Martina and I were left alone on this one.

We were not left completely alone, we had the support of the Cincinnati-guys; Jay, Conal and Joe, and to point to one downside to the event, we did not do enough to get those guys involved in the dialogue.

We also felt it took a little too long, but receiving only one note with that feedback, it cannot have been too boring to the audience. One of the reasons it took so long, was that we let the discussion float a little into the issue of the election, and this was really something the students wanted to talk about. We managed to combine it with nuclear topics and US foreign policy, so it was a fruitful discussion. Having an elderly lady and an Indian student present, made the relations to the Cold War and the India-Pakistan issue more interesting.

One of the students came with the idea of getting in touch with professors, which could offer students “extra credit points” for attending i.e. dialogues.

Martina Grosch:

The dialogue in Lexington went fine I think, because Rune and I managed to discuss all issues with an audience on our own. We also had three guys with us from Cincinnati, but as it turned out we involved them too little in the dialogue. One reason for that might have been that Rune and I wanted to feel ourselves that we managed discussing on our own. The audience we had were very interested in the issues and we had fruitful discussions.

Learning process

Camilla Mattson:

The delegation to the US was the first time on a delegation for Rune, Martina and me. Since one of the purposes with the delegation was that we should learn as much as possible, Caecilie had only a small role during the workshops and dialogues. She had to go back to Denmark during our second dialogue, so after that, we were totally left by our own… This meant a lot of hard work and a lot of times when I felt very scared, nervous and insecure. After this week, however, I feel that I have really learnt something. Now, I feel much more confident with my role in NWIP, and I think that I’ll do everything much better next time. Since dialogues are kind of the core in NWIP, it feels very good to actually have participated in one now. I’ve been working a lot with the project the last month, without really understanding what a dialogue was before. We learnt a lot of how to prepare for dialogues, how to adjust what you say according to the audience and how to cooperate in the team. We also learnt how important it is to have fun together and not work all the time. Something we saw in the US, was that the strategy that seems to have worked well in Pakistan and India, didn’t work at all over there. It’s very important to think through what the goals are for the delegation before going, and then, during the delegation, adjust them if they are unrealistic.

Rune Dahl:

For three of us to take part in a delegation for the first time, no wonder we had to learn a lot.

I felt the learning curve for me was very steep, both during the preparations and when being on the delegation.

Especially the dialogues, which probably can only be learnt by doing, were a huge challenge.

One of the problems there, as I see it, none of us had seen a proper dialogue before, and especially the role of the chair not completely explained, at least not completely understood by us.. Doing it like we did in Cleveland, we got too hung up in our prepared arguments, and we didn’t really respond to the audience. I think the way we decided to do it eventually worked better for us, and at least with the kind of audiences we met.

A really good way to prepare, was to sit down and try out the arguments at each other; either in a role play way, or taking the arguments all the way out, so as to see which traps one can end up in, when taking the dialogues in one particular direction.

I felt we all improved as the week went along, and the dialogues were a lot better in the end of the week.

We had some troubles getting there, though, and I feel we during the week also learnt a lot about how to work together as a team.

Chris Brubaker:

The main thing we learned is that presenting to Western medical school audiences is very different than presenting to Eastern medical schools. In the U.S., our audiences were usually small and agreed with the NWIP delegation about nuclear issues. This was not the kind of response we anticipated or wanted, and a serious thought needs to go into how to better utilize the time and money for future trips. I think the best idea is to establish contacts at undergraduate universities and get class time from professors to present the NWIP dialogue to undergraduate classes. This would ensure a more diverse set of viewpoints, and would also reach more students that are likely to get involved in activism. If the NWIP wants to continue to work with U.S. medical schools, the advertising or message needs to be changed dramatically.

Camilla Mattson:

As we were preparing for our first dialogue, we tried to find out a few arguments that each one felt comfortable with. During the dialogue, me as a chair was supposed to lead the discussion. I didn’t know how to do this, and it ended up being more of a lecture than a dialogue, even though the students had many comments. I wasn’t experienced enough to see that we should have changed our arguments due to the fact that the students obviously were agreeing with us on a lot of points.

With this as a background, we tried to see ways to improve ourselves for the coming dialogues, and we found a way that worked for us. I think every group needs to find a way to practise that fits them, but this might be helpful to read before:

We decided to practice by doing role plays, where one person acted as an American student, and the other ones discussed disarmament, as in a dialogue, with her/him. This turned out to be very effective, since we could then practise how to fit in our arguments almost whatever the students were saying. Thereby, we learned how to deal with most of the arguments that can be brought up, and how to get a possibility to say the things we find important. We also learned what arguments the different persons in the group liked to say, and that was very good to know when it came to a real dialogue. When I was the chair, I knew that Rune, for example, had good arguments for NPT and Martina was good at talking about our experiences from China. It’s much easier to run a dialogue with people you know!

We changed the role of the chair a bit as well, since we talked to a small number of students, and the need to have a strict structure wasn’t as big as when you have a dialogue with 50-100 students. We had the rule that the one who was chair was the one who made the introduction and the first questions, as well as the one responsible for how the dialogue was moving on and summarising what had been said. But everybody could answer to questions, and the chair didn’t give the word to the others.

This was a way to work that we liked, but I think every team need to find their own way for their delegation.

Before going on a delegation, it’s very good to think through some argument that you like. You need to know some basics about the country you are visiting…

The main points we tried to say in every dialogue:

• A world without NW is better than one where more and more countries get them

-Proliferation, Terrorism and the risk of Accidents were our arguments that lead to this.

• US need to change

-Our experiences in Europe and China, and the benefits of International Cooperation

• There are alternatives to NW

-Nuclear weapon Convention: To get there, we need to affect both

-Decision makers: Mayors for peace

-Public awareness: Suggestions from audience

• Military expenses – Social/Health expenses

-Compare the costs, military takes money from health, UN Millennium Development Goals

Specific things to keep in mind when going to the US

It’s difficult to reach out to students who disagree with you by only putting up posters / writing e-mails promoting a project that is against nuclear weapons. One way to go around this, which many students brought up as a way that would work in USA, is to arrange debates between people pro- and against nuclear weapons. Then you would get both a bigger and a more mixed audience. The medical students that we met also saw their lack of time as a problem against getting involved in NWIP. They thought that either we could try to get first year medical students, or we should try to involve under-graduate students.

We found that if we can’t arrange a debate tour, it might be better invested time to work more with workshops and trainings for the students, since dialogues are better to use if you have an audience that disagrees with you. Since we came to these conclusions in the middle of our delegation, we didn’t have the time to change the program totally, but we tried to focus on motivating the students to join NWIP instead of debating as much with them. As soon as we had reached the point in a dialogue where everybody had said that they were against nuclear weapons, we tried to move on and spend more time on alternatives, what you can actually do if you want to change the way the world looks.

We also discussed how to advertise more efficiently for our project next time. Free food seemed to be popular. Our contacts in the US should also try to send out more e-mails, having catchy flyers and posters, tell friends about it, present it in classes and, if possible, get a notice in the press

Future plans

Rune Dahl:

Plan of action

• SPSR Conference, Chicago 2. week of March
• Speakers/debate tour – PSR board meeting
• Getting interested US students to take part in future delegations

Perhaps starting a group in Cincinnati, inviting students from the surrounding universities, especially the Lexington students were interested in this, to a training or some other event.

Chris Brubaker:

In the future, I’m looking forward to a small NWIP delegation running two workshops and possibly a training at the upcoming Student PSR conference in Chicago on March 4-6. That will be a great way for the team to reach many interested, enthusiastic medical students here in America.

Martina Grosch: