Students come to terms with nuclear weapons jargon

Junior Eric Semler believes that the technical language of nuclear weapons has kept the public from the critical task of understanding arms control. So strong is his feeling that he has spent a year researching what is apparently the first comprehensive dictionary devoted to nuclear weaponry terms for a lay audience.

Last winter, Semler was stumped by several words in a newspaper article on arms control. He couldn't find the answers in Baker Library nor, during spring term, at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva, where he was serving a term as an intern. A nuclear dictionary seemed like a good idea to him, and his internship adviser agreed, so he started collecting terms- slang,technical jargon, strategic terms, and names of leading nuclear scientists and negotiators.

In the fall, he recruited three friends- Adam Gross, Sarah Rosenfield, and Jim Benjamin-to help develop definitions. Semler says there was a lot of bias in books they used as resources but they "made a conscious effort to be as neutral as possible." Financial assistance for the project was provided by the Dickey Endowment, the Tucker Foundation, and the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

The final manuscript, entitled Comingto Terms with Nuclear War: Everyone's Guideto Nuclear Weapons Terminology, contains 1,300 definitions. Semler hopes the book will have a publisher by June, when he will travel to Stockholm as the first student intern to the U.S. delegation to the Conference on Confidence and Security Building Measures and Disarmament in Europe.

Some 30 Dartmouth students applied for the internship, made possible by Robert Barry '56, head of the U.S. delegation. Semler, though, was an easy choice. He's a Russian Studies major. He speaks Russian. And in addition to his work on the book and the term in Geneva, he wrote constituent letters explaining nuclear freeze legislation as an intern in the Washington office of Senator Mark Hatfield, and he chaired a nuclear freeze campaign at Dartmouth.

"The nuclear arms race is the most critical, urgent issue that faces mankind," says Semler. "But it is clear today that the general public perceives the arms race as an issue that is beyond its control and comprehension. I want my dictionary to help encourage readers to take a more active role in the nuclear discussion, or at least to understand what the experts are talking about. I just want people to be concerned."

Baker Library didn't have the answers EricSemler wanted, so he wrote a book himself onnuclear weapons terms.