Educating for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament w/ Brennan Tierney and Masako Toki

In this episode, host Lillian Koizumi talks with nuclear disarmament experts and educators Brennan Tierney and Masako Toki about their personal journeys, what inspired them to pursue this work, their thoughts on the role education plays in creating a nuclear-free world, the role of young people in the disarmament movement, and much more. 

Brennan is a public school civics teacher and is passionate about building students’ capacity and leadership to create positive change in their communities. In 2024, he received the Richard Aieta Award for Promising New Teacher from the Massachusetts Council for the Social Studies. Brennan also serves as a Development Consultant with Back from the Brink, a national grassroots campaign working toward a world free of nuclear weapons, and as a Program Assistant for the Ellsberg Initiative for Peace and Democracy. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Legal Studies (2018) and a Master’s in Education (2023), both from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Learn more about Back from the Brink here: https://preventnuclearwar.org/ 

Masako is a Senior Project Manager and Research Associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute in Monterey, CA. She is passionate about disarmament and nonproliferation education for young generations.  She coordinates the Critical Issues Forum (CIF) to promote disarmament and nonproliferation education to high school students and teachers in the US, Japan, Russia and other countries, and the Summer Undergraduate Nonproliferation Fellowship Program. Her research interests include Japan’s nuclear disarmament policy, nonproliferation and disarmament education, humanitarian initiative, and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. She is also a member of the Japan Association of Disarmament Studies and the US-Japan Leadership Program (US-Japan Foundation). 

Learn more about the Critical Issues Forum here: https://sites.middlebury.edu/criticalissuesforum/ 

Music attribution: Podcast Music

To learn more about the Ikeda Center, visit ikedacenter.org or email us at podcast@ikedacenter.org