Courses and programs relating to nuclear war have proliferated on the nation's cam-
puses perhaps even faster than the nuclear arsenals have proliferated. Like the arse-
nals, the proliferation in nuclear war courses has had a vertical dimension, occurring at
all levels of education from elementary school through graduate school, as well as a
horizontal dimension, including a broad range of subjects from the humanities to the
hard sciences. At the university level, one can find courses as varied as "The Ethics of
Nuclear Deterrence" and "Science, Technology, and the Nuclear Arms Race," as well
as some interdisciplinary courses covering the whole gamut of nuclear issues. (See
Table 1 for a partial listing of topics relevant to various academic disciplines.)

Because of its inherent interdisciplinary nature, nuclear war education can serve as
an excellent vehicle to bring together university educators from across the spectrum of
disciplines, either for a team teaching effort or for a conference to exchange ideas.
One such gathering, the 1986 Conference on Nuclear War Education, sponsored by
George Mason University, served as the impetus for this volume, most of whose
authors attended that conference. This book, however, is not merely the proceedings
of a conference. Rather, it is an organized collection of perspectives on nuclear war
education as seen by both some of its leading practitioners and critics. On a nation-
wide basis, nuclear war education is probably offered at well over a hundred campuses
ranging from two-year colleges to military service academies to elite research universi-
ties. (Collections of course syllabi for courses from schools across the nation can be
obtained from such Washington, D.C.-based organizations as the Federation of Ameri-
can Scientists and the United Campuses Against Nuclear War.)

But what is nuclear war education? I suspect nuclear war education may mean very
different things depending on one's political and academic orientation. For me, a physi-
cist by training, nuclear war education naturally includes the physics of nuclear weap-
ons and the effects of a nuclear war, as far as these can be known. But nuclear war
education is, in my view, just as much about the U. S.-Soviet relationship and the
political forces that drive the arms competition as it is about nuclear explosives. Some
observers may wish to further broaden the field of study to encompass the causes of
international conflict generally, finding that focusing on the nuclear issue is too confin-
ing. Terms used to describe this broader perspective range from "peace education,"
or "conflict studies," to "security studies." Indeed, a number of the authors in this
collection would probably prefer one of these alternative labels. My own preference for
the term "nuclear war education" reflects my interest in the specific nuclear aspects of
the problem which faces humanity. The existence of nuclear weapons does pose some

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