Any Grad students doing ethics of war and peace?

. . . this looks like a great retreat!

Call for Papers - military medical ethics

CfP: Military Medical Ethics and Hybrid Warfare
ICMM Lilienberg Workshop 2016

For the sixth time, the ICMM Reference Centre for Education on IHL and Ethics together with the Medical Services Directorate of the Swiss Armed Forces and the Center for Military Medical Ethics at Zurich University organise their annual joint workshop at the shore of the Lake Constance.

Focus in 2016: Military Medical Ethics and Hybrid Warfare
19-21 May 2016 at Forum Lilienberg in Ermatingen (CH).

The main topic of the 2016 workshop will be Military Medical Ethics and Hybrid Warfare. Much has been discussed about new forms of warfare and recent developments have proven that realities can change very fast. There has been much less discussion, however, on the implications of these new forms of warfare for the medical services. Our workshop wants to fill this gap and discuss ethical challenges for military and civil health care services that emerge out of new forms of deployment and conflict scenarios.

We invite papers/presentations on topics addressing ethical questions faced by medical services in the context of so-called hybrid warfare. We equally encourage reports from the field (e.g. case studies) as well as philosophic papers or legal analyses.

Presentations are expected to last 25 minutes in order to leave enough time for discussion. The presentations will be edited in a comprehensive book on MME in Hybrid Warfare (see section Conference Proceedings in the full CfP (PDF)).


Full CfP with instructions: http://melac.ch/images/PDF/LILI2016-CfP.pdf
CfP online: http://melac.ch/71-call-for-papers-lilienberg-workshop-2016
General Information: http://workshop.melac.ch


Kind regards
Daniel Messelken


--
Dr. phil. Daniel Messelken
Center for Military Medical Ethics
Zollikerstr. 117, CH 8008 Zürich
http://www.melac.ch

Interesting post on drone warfare

Clearly there is much that Marianne Talbot is not aware of in the drone warfare discussions. The recent conference put on by the US Naval Postgraduate seminar might be a good place to look for people who are studying this issue deeply. However, her recent post about a weekend conference she held is interesting nonetheless. 

Call for Papers

This item may interest some readers of this blog:

Theme: Just War Theory in an African Context
Type: International Workshop
Institution: University of Johannesburg
Location: Johannesburg, Gauteng (South Africa)
Date: 4.–5.4.2016
Deadline: 30.11.2015
__________________________________________________

Just War Theory originated largely in a Christian and European
context. What might it look like through the lens of
characteristically sub-Saharan African values and norms?

Answering this overarching question might involve addressing these:
Given a sub-Saharan ethical background, of, say, welfarism, vitalism
or communitarianism, would something akin to Just War Theory be
justified, or would something more pacifist (or realist) be apt? If
something akin to Just War Theory is on the cards, would the idea of
just cause be reducible to rebutting aggression? Regardless of that,
how would aggression be conceived? How might the good and bad central
to the proportionality test be plausibly understood? Might the
partiality salient in sub-Saharan ethical thought sensibly influence
what counts as proportionate? Would substantial weight be placed on
the need for a right intention? Would authorization from the United
Nations or some other collective body be considered essential in
light of, say, the emphasis African political philosophy has often
placed on democratic deliberation when it comes to conflict
resolution?

Prof Thaddeus Metz will be convening a one- or two-day workshop at
the University of Johannesburg devoted to these and related questions
(4-5 April 2016). If you are interested in participating, please send
a brief (100 – 300 word) abstract to tmetz@uj.ac.za by 30 November
2015. Workshop proceedings will aim to be published as a special
issue of a journal.

Some funding will be available to mitigate the cost of traveling to
Johannesburg, particularly for those based in developing countries.

(NB: Empirical discussion of particular wars and military conflicts
in Africa is welcome, but only so long as it is done to make a
theoretical or philosophical point.)


Contact:

Prof Thaddeus Metz
Philosophy Department
University of Johannesburg
B-Ring 6, Cnr Kingsway & University Road
Auckland Park, 2006
South Africa
Email: tmetz@uj.ac.za

Workshop: Frowe's Defensive Killing and Lazar's Sparing Civilians, NYC 29 - 30 Sept

Call for Registration: Workshop on Helen Frowe’s Defensive Killing (Oxford: OUP, 2014) and Seth Lazar’s Sparing Civilians (Oxford: OUP, in press).

Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs
170 East 64th Street, New York
29 - 30 September, 2015

Speakers:
Jeff McMahan (Oxford)
Adil Haque (Rutgers)
Cheyney Ryan (Oregon and Oxford)
Massimo Renzo (King's College London)
Kimberly Ferzan (Virginia)
Christian Barry (ANU)
Yitzhak Benbaji (Tel Aviv)
Victor Tadros (Warwick)

The workshop is sponsored by the Australian Research Council, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, and the Society for Applied Philosophy. The workshop is free to attend (including lunch and refreshments), but places are limited. Participants are expected to read both books in advance (pdfs will be made available to those who register). Please email jonathan.parry@philosophy.su.se to reserve a place.

New Ethics and War blog

The Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace has launched a new blog that you may be interested in reading.

The Ethical War Blog will publish short and timely opinion articles on war-related topics in the news, written by specialists in the field, in an accessible and digestible format.

The blog launches with five articles, with new content to be added continuously:

• Prof. James Pattison asks whether arming rebels in conflicts such as Syria is preferable to military intervention. [LINK]
• Prof. Adil Ahmed Haque discusses ISIS, cultural destruction, and international law. [LINK]
• Prof. Yitzhak Benbaji and Prof. Alexander Yakobsen assess the morality of Hamas’ tactics during Operation Protective Edge [LINK]
• Dr. Jonathan Peterson asks whether defending cultural objects can justify waging war against ISIS. [LINK]
• Prof. David Rodin discusses the conflict between the right to free speech and the duty to avoid causing harm in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. [LINK]

For more information about the blog (including if you would be interested in contributing), please get in touch with Jonathan Parry at jonathan.parry@philosophy.su.se. And do please circulate this to anyone you think may be interested.

Call for Chapters: Force Short of War

Call for Chapters

- - - Please distribute widely - - -

Force Short of War: A Multidisciplinary Normative Approach

Jai Galliott (University of New South Wales, Kensington)

& Daniel Brunstetter (University of California, Irvine)

The use of force short of war is now commonplace, in large part owing to casualty aversiveness and the explosion of emerging technologies. It usually involves the selective or limited use of military force by a state to achieve political objectives and assumes many forms. These include targeted killing, assassination, setting up no-fly zones, special-forces raids, very limited duration bombing campaigns or missile strikes, and ‘low intensity’ counterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. However, ‘force short of war’ also encompasses the provision of military support for regime stabilization or regime change through support of secessionist/independence movements. This multi-disciplinary volume asks a number of questions about the moral, legal and political status of such operations, the strategic situations in which such force is best used, and whether existing rules and regulations are sufficiently robust to deal with the moral challenges the use of limited force entails.

We welcome high quality abstracts from philosophers, lawyers, political/international relations theorists, strategists and other concerned researchers on any topic from the following (non-exhaustive) list:

- the difference between war and force short of war (and/or limited force)

- the role of traditional just war theory in modern conflict

- the need for a new third tenet: jus ad vim

- the limits of force short of war

- IHL and force short of war

- legitimate authority/authorisation of force short of war

- Low intensity conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere

- targeted killing and assassination

- regime change

- secession

- drones

- links to the invasion of sovereignty

- autonomous systems

- cyber warfare

- the politics of force short of war

- the history of conflicts short of war

- counterinsurgency (guerilla) operations

- counterterrorism operations

- military/police dichotomy in conflict

- the ethics of arming rebels

- limited force and the responsibility to protect (R2P)

- the role of sanctions

- providing limited military force to help other governments fighting civil wars

- force short of war and the connection to peace

Abstracts should be 200 words in length, clearly convey the core argument of the proposed chapter and show a strong thematic connection. All abstracts should be accompanied by a biosketch of up to 150 words, detailing one's qualifications and research interests. Full papers are expected to be 7,000-8,000 words. We have interest from a ‘Category A’ university publisher and confirmed options with a ‘Category B’ press (A-E scale).

All submissions and questions should be directed to: jaichristiangalliott@gmail.com.

Deadline for submissions: 1 June 2015

Notification of acceptance: 1 July 2015

Cécile Fabre on military ethics

Cécile Fabre has an interesting article on military ethics in the journal Ethics. She argues that we ought to separate the ethical issues involved in starting a war from the ethical issues involved in ending it. That sounds right to me. The article is also fairly thorough. You can comment on it at PEA Soup where you can also find a critical introduction by Helen Frowe. 

War and Peace in Political Thought - graduate conference, Budapest

From an email: 

Central European University (CEU), Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) and the Pázmány Péter Catholic University (PPKE) jointly organize the First Istvan Hont Graduate Conference in Political Thought. The conference commemorates the legacy of Istvan Hont (1947-2013), influential Hungarian-born lecturer and writer on the history of political thought, Fellow of King's College at the University of Cambridge.

The conference is part of a larger framework of cooperation between the three host universities and aims to bring together doctoral students interested in political thought from various disciplines. The conference is devoted to the topic of ‘War and Peace’ in history, philosophy and political thought. Keynote speakers will include:

Catherine Zuckert (Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame)

TBA

The conference organizers invite doctoral students to submit their proposals which discuss issues of war and peace. Submissions are welcome from students of various disciplines such as intellectual history, philosophy, political science, or international relations.

The conference aims to investigate some of the following questions: How to define war and what were the past attempts to define it? Who is to wage wars, in what manner, for what reasons and are these questions relevant? Is peace only a lack of war? Will the next World War be indeed fought with sticks and stones? How is and was the theme of war and peace pictured in public discourses and in individual reflections? Topics based on these questions may include, but are not limited to the following areas:

• Theories of War: just war, realism, right of self-defense, militarism, intervention, religion and war, modernity and total war
• Theories of Peace: pacifism, non-violent struggle, limits of toleration, religious and secular peace movements
• The "next war": the “last war”, hyperreal war, cyber war, hybrid warfare, drones, crisis theory
• Discourses about war and peace: intellectuals and war, myths of wars, Cold War narratives, propaganda

The language of the conference is English.

Date: September 17-19, 2015

Venue: TBA (The event is going to take place at one of the organizing universities.)

Please submit your proposal of 300-400 words to hont.conf.2015@gmail.com together with your name and affiliation. The deadline for submitting proposals is May 31, 2015.

Some support for accommodation or travel expenses will be provided for participants who have no access to institutional funding for academic travel.

Further information: https://hontconf2015.wordpress.com/

Nancy Sherman . . .

. . . the military ethicist, has a new book out and an Op-Ed in the LA times (see the responses too).