Steering Committee and Principal Staff

Ray Acheson (Associate Editor). Ms. Acheson is project associate for the Reaching Critical Will project of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She coordinates and edits the project’s principal publications, including the First Committee Monitor, CD Report, and Model Nuclear Inventory. Prior to this position, Ray was a researcher and writer for the project for two years. She has also worked extensively with Randy Forsberg at the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, tracking the manufacture and trade of conventional weapons, and writing for the Arms Control Reporter. Ms. Acheson has been a social justice activist for many years, contributing with writing and research to a variety of organizations working on peace, justice, and environmental issues. She graduated from the University of Toronto’s Peace and Conflict Studies program, with an Honours B.A.

Dr. John Burroughs (Steering Committee). Dr. Burroughs is executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy and an adjunct professor of international law at Rutgers Law School, Newark. Dr. Burroughs is a specialist on treaty regimes and international law relating to nuclear and other non-conventional weapons. In 1998, he represented LCNP at the negotiations on the International Criminal Court in Rome, and in 1995, he was the non-governmental legal coordinator at the hearings on nuclear weapons before the International Court of Justice. Dr. Burroughs is co-editor of Nuclear Disorder or Cooperative Security? U.S. Weapons or Terror, the Global Proliferation Crisis, and Paths to Peace (2007) and Rule of Power or Rule of Law? An Assessment of U.S. Policies and Actions Regarding Security-Related Treaties (2003); author of The Legality of Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons: A Guide to the Historic Opinion of the International Court of Justice (1998); and has published articles in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and World Policy Journal. He has a J.D. and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A. from Harvard.

Felicity Hill (Steering Committee). Ms. Hill is a vice-president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). In 2007, as a consultant for Medical Association to Prevent War (Australia), she coordinated the launch of the new campaign of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons (ICAN). Her previous position was as the Greenpeace International Political Adviser on Nuclear and Disarmament Issues. Prior to that, she was a peace and security adviser to the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), responsible for the Fund’s work on conflict prevention, field testing and developing gender-based early warning indicators, and providing technical advice and guidance to practitioners planning and executing disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programs in post-conflict settings. She was part of the team that prepared the book Women, War, Peace (2002) for two independent experts to present to the UN Security Council. As director of WILPF’s UN Office in New York from 1997-2001, Ms. Hill created the Reaching Critical Will and PeaceWomen projects focused on enhancing NGO preparation for and participation in security and disarmament forums at the United Nations.

Michael Spies (Editor). Mr. Spies is research associate for Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy. He has carried out research and analysis projects for LCNP on topics ranging from U.S. compliance with arms control and disarmament commitments under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to IAEA monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program. He is co-editor of Nuclear Disorder or Cooperative Security? U.S. Weapons or Terror, the Global Proliferation Crisis, and Paths to Peace (2007), and author of “Iran and the Limitations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime,” American University International Law Review, volume 22, number 3. Prior to joining LCNP, he worked for the Los Alamos Study Group in New Mexico, which monitors the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory. He has a B.A. from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

Dr. Robert Zuber (Steering Committee). Dr. Zuber is development and outreach director for Global Action to Prevent War. A graduate of Yale and Columbia universities, he formerly was the education and outreach specialist for the Green Map System, and executive director of the Center for Environmental Education. He has been an organizational and fundraising consultant to a wide variety of human rights, environmental, educational, and religious non-profit organizations, among them Human Rights Watch, Blacksmith Institute/Polluted Places, the Center for International Media Action, East Harlem Interfaith, and the Center for Community Action in North Carolina. He has also provided leadership on youth, hunger, AIDS, and related issues for congregations in Harlem, North Carolina, and other settings.