‘The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe’

His talk, “Atomic Matters: The Fragility of the Nuclear Order,” is part of the Voices of Our Time speaker series. Admission is free and the public is invited to attend.

Allison is the author of “Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe” and “Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

Over the past three decades, he has been a leading U.S. national defense and security analyst. He served in the Reagan and Clinton administrations, was a founding member of the Trilateral Commission, and served as a director of the Council on Foreign Relations and on a number of committees addressing terrorism and nuclear weapons proliferation.

As assistant secretary of defense under Clinton, he directed programs that resulted in the safe return of more than 12,000 tactical nuclear weapons from former Soviet republics and the elimination of more than 4,000 strategic nuclear warheads previously aimed at the U.S. He has the sole distinction of having twice been awarded the Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest civilian award given by the Department of Defense.

He is currently director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

A native of Charlotte, he attended Davidson College and Harvard College, where he received a bachelor’s degree. He also received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Oxford University and a doctorate from Harvard.