News Release

The students will gather at the university's Homewood campus for the eighth biennial Student Pugwash U.S.A. conference, titled "Meeting the Needs of a Global Community." The students will work with leaders from U.S. government, non-profit and private sector businesses. At conference's end, student papers on topics ranging from wetlands in West Africa to health care in Mexican-American communities will be edited by Pugwash and distributed as the Global Issues Guidebook, a workbook for high school science teachers nationwide.

Student Pugwash, a non-profit educational organization with chapters on 150 campuses in the United States and 18 abroad, takes its name and guiding tenets from the 1957 conference of science and world affairs held in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, under the direction of Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell. Since 1979, Student Pugwash conferences in the United States and abroad have offered bright students a chance to create blueprints for the future.

At Hopkins, students will spend their mornings in private working groups devoted to exploring issues in environmental stewardship, preventive diplomacy, the ethics of human genetic information, health care delivery, and community-friendly corporations and communications technology. In the afternoon and evening, students will attend lectures and workshops given by senior participants in the conference; among them are Timothy Wirth, undersecretary for global affairs at the State Department, and Adele Simmons, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. On Wednesday, June 15, students will play the World Game, a highly visual interactive simulation of resource-sharing between nations, which takes place with all 100 students scattered on a map the size of a basketball court. "Puggers," as Pugwash members call each other, are chiefly undergraduate and graduate students planning careers in such fields as ecology, law, engineering, diplomacy and medicine. Some will travel halfway around the world to share insights and gain information to help their countries. Past Pugwash conferences have resulted in intergenerational business and research partnerships that span the globe.

For press information about students and the conference, which will be held at 3400 North Charles St. in Baltimore, call Sujata Massey of Johns Hopkins at (410) 516-7160; or Pugwash Conference Coordinator Nicky Short at the Student Pugwash U.S.A. office, (202) 328-6555. After June 6, Nicky will be at Hopkins' Pugwash headquarters, (410) 516-6401.