Neustadt Award Honors Senators Nunn and Lugar for Nuclear Safety

Former Senator Sam Nunn, founder and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and a member of the Belfer Center’s International Council, and former Senator Richard Lugar were awarded the prestigious 2013 Richard E. Neustadt Award at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) on May 2. HKS Dean David Ellwood noted that the award is bestowed annually to honor one or more individuals “for creating powerful solutions to public problems, drawing on research and intellectual ideas as appropriate.”

The award honors Nunn and Lugar for their successes in eliminating and securing nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the two senators spearheaded bipartisan legislation that created the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. The program provided funding for Russia and other former Soviet states to decommission and dismantle nuclear, biological, and chemical stockpiles.

“For those of us in the nuclear sphere, Sam Nunn is a genuine hero,” said Belfer Center Director Graham Allison in welcoming Nunn to a recent event at the Center. As the Soviet Union fell apart, Allison noted, Nunn and Lugar realized that even if a few of the thousands of nuclear weapons in the Soviet arsenal fell into the wrong hands, the result could be catastrophic. Because of the Nunn-Lugar program, the world is safer.