The U.S. "strategic pivot" to the Asia-Pacific region, creates growing risks of great power wars in the 21st century, and the University of California shares a role and responsibility in the historic and continuing role of U.S. imperial aspirations and the military-industrial complex. The University of California has managed the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories at Livermore and Los Alamos since their inception, and today is part of a management team that includes Bechtel, Babcock and Wilcox, URS Corporation, and Battelle.

This event commemorated the 50th anniversary of the "free speech movement" and examined the U.S history of nuclear colonialism in the Asia-Pacific region. It highlighted landmark litigation filed earlier this year by the tiny Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), used as a U.S. nuclear test site for 12 years, against the nine nuclear weapons states for their failure to disarm under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and customary international law.

Sponsors: American Friends Service Committee; Western States Legal Foundation; Working Group for Peace and Demilitarization in Asia and the Pacific; San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility; Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies Program, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California at Berkeley

Presentations

The University as Contested Terrain: The Origins of Ethnic Studies and Resistance to Empire, Christine Hong, University of California, Santa Cruz video

Is the Pacific Pivot the Empire in New Clothes?, Stephen McNeil, American Friends Service Committee video

The Pacific Pivot in a Global Context: Great Power War Risk in the 21st Century, Andrew Lichterman, Western States Legal Foundation video

The Mouse That Roared: The Marshall Islands Lawsuits, Jackie Cabasso, Western States Legal Foundation video

The United States as a Maritime Power and the Struggle for Economic and Military Primacy in the Pacific, Arnie Saiki, Moana Nui Network video

The Nuclear University and the Military-Industrial Complex, Gray Brechin author of Imperial San Francisco and Visiting Scholar, Geography, University of California, Berkeley video