January 27th, 2011

Ethics and War: Why So Many Civilians Are Dying

There are more laws and international treaties designed to protect human rights in conflict zones than ever before. Yet civilians continue to pay the ultimate price, with women and children frequently caught in the crossfire. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was one civilian casualty for every eight or nine military casualties, said Richard Goldstone, the South African jurist who played a key role in helping his country overcome apartheid, served as the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals on Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, and became a household name in 2009 for his controversial fact-finding mission after an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip. During World War II, the ratio increased to 1-to-1. Today, after what was, Goldstone said, a "very bloody century," every combatant casualty is matched by nine civilian deaths. What explains this? Goldstone joined Stanford historian James Campbell and Peter Berkowitz, a political scientist, to grapple with this paradox as part of Stanford's Ethics and War Series, co-sponsored by the Center for International Security and Cooperation. Audio transcript available
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January 24th, 2011

Historian Edith Sheffer discusses the barrier between East and West Germany

Listen to Stanford historian Edith Sheffer's seminar about what truly divided Germany. Her talk was co-sponsored by the Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies (CREEES), the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), The Europe Center and the German Studies department.

• » Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain
  

November 15th, 2010

The origin and ethics of violence

What can possibly explain the transformation that sometimes happens from non-violent civilian to combatant to criminal? Pulitzer Prize winning author and CISAC affiliate Richard Rhodes tackled this bedeviling question head-on in a recent lecture for Stanford's Ethics & War series, co-sponsored by the Center for International Security and Cooperation. paper available
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October 29th, 2010

Cultural critic Susie Linfield discusses 'The ethics of seeing'

As a little girl Susie Linfield was captivated by a book entitled The Black Book of Polish Jewry that included photos of starving Jews in the ghettos. "I was grieved by them. I was shamed by them. But I was also sort of compelled by them," says Linfield, director of the Cultural Reporting and Criticism Program at New York University. Decades later, she reflected again on the way photographs informed her view of war as she examined photos from the Balkans and Rwanda. In her book, The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence (University of Chicago Press), Linfield returns to this theme. She spoke at Stanford as part of the Ethics and War series, sponsored in part by the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and talked with CISAC about the political context behind warfare and what she calls "the ethics of seeing." Read more »

February 12th, 2010

Martha Crenshaw on 'The Consequences of Counterterrorism'

In this edited volume, Martha Crenshaw states that "citizens of democracies may be paying a high price for policies that do not protect them from danger." The book examines the political costs and challenges democratic governments face in confronting terrorism.
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December 12th, 2006

Iraq teaches nothing about intervention in Darfur, CISAC scholar writes

With Darfur in the news, commentators are looking to Iraq to find reasons against military intervention to stop the genocide in western Sudan. But Iraq is not an example of humanitarian intervention, CISAC visiting scholar Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe explains. A better way to decide whether to intervene in Darfur, she suggests, is to follow guidelines developed from just-war theory and set forth in a report by the U.N. High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change.

• » More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, A
• » San Jose Mercury News: "Why Iraq teaches nothing about intervention in Darfur"

January 1st, 2005

University Scholars Play Prominent Role in Charting Reforms for United Nations

A new united nations report recommending the most sweeping reform in the institution's history offers a global vision of collective security for the 21st century that is as committed to development in poor nations as it is to prevention of nuclear terrorism in rich ones. Read more »