Posts Tagged 'Philip Nash'

Nash: As with A-bomb drop, presidential decisions full of moral gray areas

August 22, 2012·Comments closed

“The wooden structures were closely packed, quite numerous, you may be aware of housing in Japan, the interior walls made of paper so they burn very, very well. Temperatures in the city reached upwards of 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. Vehicle frames were melted; canals and ponds were brought to the boiling point. The air contained drops of liquid glass drifting in the wind. Citizens running for their lives spontaneously combusted; many were found charred beyond recognition or dead from heat or suffocation. Over a quarter of a million buildings were destroyed, 16 square miles, almost one-quarter of the city, were laid to complete waste — up to 100,000 people died in that raid,” said Philip Nash, an associate professor of history at Penn State University at the start of his Tuesday Interfaith Lecture.

Nash is the author of The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Jupiters, 1957–1963.

“What I just described is the conventional bombing raid — B-29 bombers on the night March 9 to 10, 1945 — that was not a description of Hiroshima or Nagasaki,” he said.

Interfaith Lecture Previews

Presidential ethics of nuclear age oversimplified, Nash says

August 20, 2012·Comments closed

The decision to drop atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, was one of the biggest ethical dilemmas of the mid-1900s — but it wasn’t a real decision at all, said historian Philip Nash. Rather than a choice, it is more accurate to talk about the assumption that the bomb would be dropped.

For a week on “The Ethics of Presidential Power,” President Harry Truman’s “OK” to drop two bombs that killed more than 100,000 people seems like a perfect topic, Nash said. But Truman actually had little involvement in the process and never made a “yes” or “no” decision to use the bombs. Instead, the question was “how” to use them.

Nash, an associate professor of history at Penn State University, will discuss the context surrounding the bombs, the moral considerations that were involved and Truman’s limited voice at 2 p.m. Tuesday in the Hall of Philosophy.

Lectures

With ‘Presidents Club,’ Week Nine delves into nation’s highest office

August 18, 2012·Comments closed

The position of United States president is one that only those who have occupied the Oval Office can understand, meaning current and former presidents share a bond that transcends political boundaries.

With both major political parties on the cusp of nominating their candidates for the most important job in the U.S., Chautauqua Institution offers a week of 10:45 a.m. Amphitheater lectures exploring the complexities and burdens of the presidency, and the relationships between those who have held it.

The week theme takes its title from the book The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity, and attendees will hear from authors Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, a pair of presidential historians and a pair of presidential daughters.