13 Days in October: The Cuban Missile Crisis

Thursday, October 13, 2022, from 7 pm ET – 8:30 pm ET

Cost: Free – register here 

To mark the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the International Spy Museum is pleased to offer an exclusive 90-minute professional development webinar for middle and high school teachers. 

For two weeks in October 1962, the world held its breath as President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev navigated one of the most intense showdowns of the Cold War, coming to the brink of nuclear war. Thanks to insights from intelligence collection and analysis, Kennedy and his advisors were able to prevent mutually assured destruction and a global conflict that could have changed the course of human history.

Join SPY educators for this interactive webinar on how to combine declassified primary documents, role playing, and intelligence analysis to engage students in the study of this critical historical event. In addition, teachers will hear from presidential historian and co-author of the prize-winning book, One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964, Timothy Naftali, and Spy Museum Historian, Dr. Andrew Hammond, as they discuss the significance of this case study and how intelligence successes can shape the course of history. 

Prior to the start of this webinar, teachers will receive via email a specially curated packet of primary documents and resources provided by the International Spy Museum and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

All teachers that attend the professional development webinar will be entered to win various prizes including SPY classroom swag bags, copies of One Hell of a Gamble, and more!

Support for this program has been provided by a generous grant from the Pritzker Military Foundation, on behalf of the Pritzker Military Museum & Library. 

About the speakers:

Timothy Naftali is a clinical associate professor of public service and of history and directs the undergraduate public policy program at NYU in which he teaches two classes on intelligence. As a freshly minted Ph.D. in the 1990s, Naftali, who had written a dissertation on US and UK counterespionage and had studied Russian, participated in a unique project organized by the Crown Books division of Random House that permitted a handful of foreign scholars collaborating with a Russian co-author to research the archives of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service [SVR]. Because of the later closures of Russian archives, Naftali’s book with Aleksandr Fursenko on the Cuban Missile Crisis, One Hell of a Gamble [1997], remains the only book based on research in SVR materials and the Russian Presidential Archive. Their award-winning second book, Khrushchev’s Cold War [2006], provided a broader look at the crisis years of the 1960s. In 2007, Naftali became the founding director of the federal Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, curating the Library’s permanent Watergate Gallery. The author of several articles and books on the American presidency and a history of counterterrorism, since 2016 Naftali has been a CNN presidential historian and appears regularly in historical documentaries. 

Dr. Andrew Hammond is Historian & Curator at the International Spy Museum. His interest in intelligence came from a period of service in the Royal Air Force, with secondments to the British Army and the Royal Navy. He specializes in military and intelligence history and is fascinated by how the artifacts at the Museum – whether an Enigma Machine, a Stinger Missile or the Jester’s Laptop – help tell personal stories and larger historical narratives. He is the author of a forthcoming book entitled, Struggles for Freedom: Afghanistan and US Foreign Policy Since 1979 and is working on another book that tells the story of 9/11 and the post-9/11 wars through the voices of military and intelligence veterans. He has taught at a number of institutions on both sides of the Atlantic and has held fellowships at the British Library, the Library of Congress, New York University and the University of Warwick. He was formerly a Mellon Public Humanities Fellow at the 9/11 Memorial Museum and is currently a Public Policy Fellow at the Wilson Center. He hosts SpyCast, the Museum’s podcast, and has taken acting and public speaking courses in London, New York, Birmingham and Washington, DC.