Dealing With Local Disasters at the Scarsdale Forum

Two Scarsdale residents, Dr. Richard Garwin and Jonathan Lewis, will discuss Dealing with Local Disasters: What Can Nuclear and Pandemic Disaster Planning Teach Us? The talk is the third this year in the Sunday Speaker Series from the Scarsdale Forum and will be held on May 16th at 3pm at the Scarsdale Woman's Club.

With the recent storm that left almost 80% of Scarsdale residents without electrical power for multiple days, and the severe flooding that occurred in April 2007, many people are asking if there is something that we can do better to help mitigate the impact of future disasters. Dr. Richard Garwin and Jonathan Lewis, will present a discussion on what has worked in the past and how we can apply it to Scarsdale. Eric Rothschild, Sunday Speaker Series Chair, will welcome questions from the audience at the conclusion of the presentation.

Dr Garwin is a long time club member of the Scarsdale Forum and Jonathan Lewis is the past President. Both have relevant expertise in this area.

Dr. Richard Garwin was born in 1928 and earned a B.S. in physics from Case Institute of Technology in 1947, and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago in 1949. He began his work with nuclear weapons technology in 1950 at Los Alamos Laboratory. He joined IBM in 1952 and became an IBM Fellow at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in 1967, where he worked until 1993. He has authored and co-authored numerous books, published more than 500 papers, and has 43 patents in his name. Dr. Garwin has extensive experience in nuclear arms policy having served on the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States and JASON, an independent group of scientists which advises the US Government on matters of science and technology. He continues to be an influential voice in national security issues today.

Jonathan Lewis is the author of “Spy Capitalism: ITEK and the CIA” and the co-author of “Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs” and the past Scarsdale Forum President. In his work on both the history of the CIA and on partnerships between the private sector and the national security establishment, he has explored a variety of themes related to crisis management. He has spoken on intelligence related issues at the JFK School of Government at Harvard and at Yale University. He is a member of Business Executives for National Security (BENS) and for many years co-chaired the organization’s intelligence reform effort. He was a part of the BENS panel that reviewed the CIA’s venture capital initiative, In-Q-Tel, as part of a congressionally mandated study, and was also part of a BENS study for the CIA on pay for performance. The BENS panel was awarded the Agency Bronze Seal Medallion for their work in this area. He is a director of the Westchester chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and a Trustee of the American Jewish Historical Society. He is a co-founder of Samson Capital Advisors where he is a member of the executive committee and chairs the investment committee.

The reception will begin at 3 pm on May 16 at the Scarsdale Woman's Club, 37 Drake Road in Scarsdale, and the program will start at 3:15 pm. Admission is free, plenty of free parking is available.

The Scarsdale Forum Sunday Speaker series is made possible in part by the Irving Sloan grant from the Liz Claiborne / Arthur Ortenberg Foundation.