Ellsberg Initiative for Peace and Democracy 2024 Activist-in-Residence: Dr. Ira Helfand

The Ellsberg Initiative for Peace and Democracy invites you to join Dr. Ira Helfand, the inaugural Ellsberg activist-in-residence, for a week of training in antinuclear activism co-sponsored by the UMass Amherst History and Journalism departments. Dr. Helfand is an experienced nuclear abolitionist, a skilled organizer, and a physician. At the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Dr. Ira Helfand will visit with departments and classes, offering guest lectures and holding office hours. Dr. Helfand will also offer a public lecture and a public workshop on anti-nuclear activism. 

Click here to see the full schedule of events: https://eipad.org/activist-in-residence/

Ira Helfand, MD is a member of the International Steering Group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN, the recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, and  Past President of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the founding partner organization of ICAN and itself the recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. He is also co-Founder and Past President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, IPPNW’s US affiliate, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Back from the Brink coalition.

He represented ICAN at the Oslo and Nayarit Conferences on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear War, and in September of 2015 he addressed a special session of the United Nations General Assembly.  In May of 2016 he chaired the session on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war at the United Nations Open Ended Working Group meeting in Geneva that led to the successful negotiation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in the summer of 2017, and on September 20 of 2017 he represented IPPNW at the signing ceremony for the Treaty.

He has published studies on the medical consequences of nuclear war in the world’s leading medical journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, the British Medical Journal, the Lancet and the World Medical Journal, and has lectured widely in the United States, and in India, China, Japan, Korea, Russia, South Africa, Israel, Pakistan, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia, and throughout Europe on the health effects of nuclear weapons.   He represented PSR and IPPNW at the Nobel ceremonies in Oslo in December 2009, honoring President Obama, and presented their report, Nuclear Famine: One Billion People at Risk, at the Nobel Peace Laureates Summit in Chicago in April of 2012. A second edition was released in December of 2013.

Dr. Helfand was educated at Harvard College and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.  He is a former chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine and President of the Medical Staff at Cooley Dickinson Hospital, and  practiced as an internist and urgent care physician at Family Care Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts until his retirement in 2021.

He is the recipient of the 1997-1998 Will L. Judy Award, the 2003 O’Dwyer Award, the 2003 John Phillips Award, the 2016  Verdoorn Prize, the 2017 Distinguished  Peace Leadership Award,  the 2017 Edward Barsky Award of the American Public Health Association, and the 2023 Gandhi King Ikeda Community Builders Award from the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College

He lives with his wife, Deborah Smith, a medical oncologist, in Leeds, Massachusetts.