Oct. 8: Panel on war
Renowned experts to discuss 'When Should Nations Kill?'
8:43 a.m., Sept. 29, 2014--A panel discussion titled “When Should Nations Kill?” will examine the appropriate use of military force at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 8, at the University of Delaware’s Roselle Center for the Arts. The event is free and open to the public.
The discussion will feature seven nationally and internationally known authorities on the subject — including philosophers, law professors and military experts. Panelists will address prepared questions from a moderator as well as questions from the audience.
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The event is sponsored by the University’s Department of Philosophy, with the support of the Class of 1955 Ethics Endowment Fund.
Members of the armed forces and veterans are particularly invited to attend.
“The panel discussion is part of a two-day academic conference we’re having on campus, but this event is being planned for a much wider audience,” said Kai Draper, professor and chair of the philosophy department. “We expect a lively discussion that will have a great deal of relevance to current events, and we hope the community will join us.”
Scheduled to speak as panelists are:
Kimberly Kessler Ferzan is the Caddell and Chapman Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. She has also worked as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice. Her many published works include include “Justifying Self-Defense” in Law and Philosophy and “Torture, Necessity, and the Union of Law and Philosophy” in the Rutgers Law Journal.
Ian Fishback is a U.S. Army officer who gained national attention after he sent a letter to Sen. John McCain of Arizona on Sept. 16, 2005, in which he stated his concerns about the continued abuse of prisoners held under the auspices of the global war on terror. He served four combat tours in the Army, one in Afghanistan and three in Iraq. He currently serves as an instructor at West Point.
Helen Frowe is Wallenberg Academy Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Stockholm University, where she directs the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace. She is the author of Defensive Killing (forthcoming in October) and co-editor of How We Fight: Ethics in War (2014).
Adil Ahmad Haque is professor of law and Judge Jon O. Newman Scholar at Rutgers School of Law-Newark. He also has experience as a prisoners’ rights litigator. He has published several papers on the ethics of war and is currently writing a book on the moral foundations of the law of armed conflict.
Frances M. Kamm is Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at at Harvard University. Among other books, she is the author of Ethics for Enemies: Terror, Torture, and War and The Moral Target: Aiming at Right Conduct in War and Other Conflicts.
Lionel K. McPherson is an associate professor of philosophy at Tufts University. Among many other works, he is the author of “Is Terrorism Distinctively Wrong?” published in Ethics, and “Innocence and Responsibility in War,” published in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.
Bradley J. Strawser is an assistant professor of philosophy in the Defense Analysis Department at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and a research associate with Oxford’s Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict. His books include Killing by Remote Control: The Ethics of an Unmanned Military; Binary Bullets: The Ethics of Cyberwarfare; and Killing Bin Laden: A Moral Analysis.
More about the event
The panel discussion will be held in the Gore Recital Hall of the Roselle Center for the Arts. Free, validated parking will be available in the Roselle Center for the Arts garage. A reception with free food and non-alcoholic beverages will follow the discussion. See this map for directions.
Related event
Among the other events during the two-day conference is a film on the occupation of Fallujah, presented by Ross Caputi, on Oct. 8 from 3:30-5 p.m., in 207 Brown Lab. This event has been organized by the University’s student veterans group, and is also free and open to all.
Article by Ann Manser
Illustration by Christian Derr