For Immediate Release					October 31 , 1995
 
International Peace Activist Discusses Nuclear Disarmament in Lawrence Lecture 
 
 
	APPLETON, WIS. -  As a first lieutenant in the U.S. Infantry in his
early 20s, Rev. William Sloane Coffin had no qualms about the U.S.'s decision to
use the atomic bomb on Japan to bring an end to World War II.  Today, at age 71,
his perspective on nuclear armaments has undergone a 180-degree change and he
has become one of the world's leading advocates of global nuclear disarmament.
	 Coffin, the 1995-96 Stephen Edward Scarff Visiting Professor of
Religious Studies at Lawrence University, discusses the role of nuclear weapons
in today's world Wednesday, November 8 in a Lawrence Main Hall Forum entitled,
"Hiroshima and the Future of Nuclear Weapons."  Coffin's address, at 4:15 p.m.
in Main Hall Room 109, is free and open to the public. 
	Long-time civil rights activist, Coffin turned his attention from the
Vietnam War to the international peace movement in the 1980s, serving as
president of SANE/FREEZE:  Campaign for Global Security from 1987-90.  Now known
as Peace Action, it's the largest peace and justice organization in the U.S. 
Coffin says he felt "great relief" at the time of the first atomic bomb attack,
but now says the U.S. was wrong to have used the bomb and the human carnage that
resulted could have been spared through wise diplomacy.  Coffin says the use of
the atomic bomb on Japan did not make the U.S. "morally unique, just
technologically exceptional" because we had the capability to do it. 
	The world, Coffin says, is currently practicing "nuclear apartheid," in
which a minority of nations aggregate to themselves the right to possess nuclear
weapons, while policing the majority of nations against their production. 	
	An ordained Presbyterian minister, Coffin served as chaplain at Yale
University from 1958-75 and rose to national prominence during the 1960s and
'70s as a leader in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements.  In 1979,
Coffin was one of four clergymen invited by Iran's ruling Revolutionary Council
to celebrate Christmas services with the American hostages held at the U.S.
Embassy in Teheran.

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