Photo © Lex International/Aude Catimel
A professor, historian, and author, Dr. Vincent Intondi is widely considered the preeminent authority on the intersection of race and nuclear weapons.
In 2009, Intondi was an associate professor of history at Seminole State College of Florida, where he taught United States, African American, and Latin American history. In the same year, Intondi was also named Director of Research for American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute in Washington, DC. As part of the Institute, Intondi annually traveled to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to teach American and Japanese students about nuclear weapons, meet with atomic bomb survivors, and work with local groups and officials on issues relating to nuclear disarmament.
From 2013-2023, Intondi was a full professor at Montgomery College (MC) in Takoma Park, Maryland, where he taught U.S. and African American history. In 2018, Intondi founded MC’s Institute for Race, Justice, and Civic Engagement, which he directed until 2023. In his role as director, Intondi worked with Dave Zirin, Ilyasah Shabazz, D. Watkins, Jesse Hagopian, Desmond Meade, Sheena Meade, Etan Thomas, and many others in an effort to educate students on the importance of social justice and working to make MC, the community, and country more equitable and just for all. From 2023-2024, Intondi was a senior lecturer in the International Relations department at Webster University-Leiden, located in the Netherlands. Intondi is currently a domestic affiliate scholar at the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Cornell University and co-host of the Minds Blown podcast.
Intondi has been researching, writing, and lecturing about the intersection of race and nuclear weapons for over twenty years. Described by Tom Hayden as a “brilliant book by a historian who is seeing the world with new eyes,” Intondi’s first book, African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement was published in 2015 with Stanford University Press. Since the publication of African Americans Against the Bomb, Intondi’s work on race and nuclear weapons has been featured by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Arms Control Association, Ploughshares Fund, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Peace Action, Pax Christi, and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, among others. He has appeared on various podcasts and radio shows, and has published articles in Huffpost, Outrider Foundation, Common Dreams, Boston Review, Arms Control Now, and Sojourners, as well as in peer reviewed journals. Intondi has been an invited speaker at Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara, the University of Washington, University of Kentucky, Franklin & Marshall, MIIS, Syracuse University, MIT, and American University, the United Nations, and others. Intondi regularly works with organizations exploring ways to include more diverse voices in the nuclear disarmament movement. His most recent book, Saving the World From Nuclear War: The June 12, 1982 Disarmament Rally and Beyond with Johns Hopkins University Press explores the nuclear disarmament movement in the 1980s.
Praise for African Americans Against the Bomb
“As a young man I was moved by two issues, civil rights and the threat of nuclear war, and it took me many years to understand how those crises were inseparable. Vincent Intondi’s original research will shake the complacent assumption that the civil rights and anti-nuclear movements could be segregated. Intondi shows that ever since the Bomb first dropped on people of color in 1945, African Americans have been in the forefront of the campaign to stop the deployment of nuclear weapons. He corrects a historical misunderstanding and contributes to an important new perspective on our history. A brilliant first book by a young historian seeing the world with new eyes." -Tom Hayden
“The Civil Rights Movement did not exist in a historical vacuum. Dr. King spoke of the need to fight against ‘racism, materialism, and militarism,’ and Intondi’s stirring narrative effectively shows how nuclear disarmament was part of the booster struggle. This is an important read for those who are interested in properly understanding the Black freedom movement and U.S. foreign policy.”
-Benjamin Todd Jealous, former President and CEO of the NAACP
“To his great credit, Intondi’s study connects two strands of scholarship that are often kept separate, namely peace history and the Black freedom struggle…His book provides much-needed context for those who, hopefully, will explore such topics. We need more research on activists’ efforts to connect opposition to nuclear weapons (and peace issues more broadly) with the Black freedom struggle.”
-Robbie Lieberman, American Historical Review