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). 

Workshop on Lethal Agency

Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace 

Tuesday 12th May, 2015

Långholmen Hotel, Stockholm

Speakers:

Matthew Hanser (UC Santa Barbara) 'Trying, Risking and Wronging’

Adil Ahmad Haque (Rutgers) 'Human Shields’

Victor Tadros (Warwick) 'Causal Contributions and Liability'

Patrick Tomlin (Reading) 'Proportionality and Probability'

This small workshop will focus on philosophical issues surrounding lethal agency. Papers will be pre-circulation only, and should be read in advance. Attendance is free, but places are limited. Please email Jonathan Parry (jonathan.parry@philosophy.su.se) to register. 

Call for Papers: The Future of Just War

CALL FOR PAPERS:

The Future of Just War: Theoretical and Practical Challenges

Dates: October 7 – 9, 2015

Location: Naval Postgraduate School; Monterey, California

Deadline for submissions: May 15th, 2015
Notification of acceptance: June 15th, 2015

Any paper on any topic related to the ethics of war, just war theory, the moral implications for the future of warfare, or related issues will be considered. However, some preference will be given to papers that consider the ethical implications of new, emerging, and future military technology and the resulting changing nature of warfare. The conference organizers are specifically hoping for strong ethics papers on cyberwarfare and unmanned and robotic weapons systems. We also hope to have an interdisciplinary event and welcome submissions from a range of fields including, but not limited to: philosophy, law, public policy, political science, or related fields. Submissions from active scientists, researchers, or practitioners are also welcome, particularly insofar as those presentations could complement the ethics theme of the conference.

To submit a paper for consideration, please submit an extended abstract of 500 to 800 words. Full papers will also be considered. All submissions will be peer-reviewed.

Submit extended abstracts or full papers to JWTConference@gmail.com as .doc, .docx, or .pdf. Please put "Conference Submission" in the subject line of the email.

The conference is hosted by the Defense Analysis Department at the Naval Postgraduate School with generous support from the Consortium for Robotics and Unmanned Systems Education and Research, and in collaboration with the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace and the National Science Foundation.

Three graduate student stipends of $750 each will be offered to the best papers submitted by graduate students.

Organizing Committee: Bradley J. Strawser (chair), Fritz Allhoff, Helen Frowe, Rebecca Lorentz, and Amelia Simunek. Send any questions to JWTConference@gmail.com.

Keynote Speakers:

Jeff McMahan, University of Oxford
Adil Haque, Rutgers School of Law
Helen Frowe, Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace

Confirmed Speakers:

Saba Bazargan, UC San Diego
Leo Blanken, Naval Postgraduate School
Wilson Brissett, United States Air Force Academy
Susanne Burri, University of St. Gallen
Janina Dill, University of Oxford
Ian Fishback, United States Military Academy
Seth Lazar, The Australian National University
Camber Warren, Naval Postgraduate School

Review of Lango's The Ethics of Armed Conflict

Review here.

McMahan lecture tomorrow at LSE

We are delighted to announce this year's Auguste Comte Memorial Lecture by Professor Jeff McMahan (Oxford)

Wednesday 11 March, 6:30-8 pm.

Liability, Proportionality and the Number of Aggressors
Venue: Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House
All are welcome; no tickets required.

Jeff McMahan is White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford and the author of The Ethics of Killing: problems at the margins of life and Killing in War.
Further info on:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2015/03/20150311t1830vHKT.aspx

With best wishes,
Alex Voorhoeve

Want to do a PhD in Military ethics in Australia?

PhD Scholarship in Military Ethics at the University of New South Wales.

UNSW Canberra – located at the Australian Defence Force Academy - is
offering a 3-year PhD Scholarship for a project on “What Motivates
Enlistment and Why it Matters, Morally and Politically”.

Traditionally the military has been thought of as an institution, not unlike
the Church, whose members answer a “higher calling” to sacrifice their
interests, ambitions, and if need be their lives for the sake of a greater
good. But according to some historians and sociologists the military now
resembles an occupation, governed by market principles, where workers
exchange their labour for material reward. Careerism, a fixation on building
a resume for post-military employment, and an ever greater reliance on
extrinsic incentives are the hallmarks of what George Moskos calls the
“occupational shift” in the modern military.

What are the ethical and political implications of the occupational shift?
If soldiers are employees, should familiar employee rights and labour
standards apply to them? Does the occupational shift threaten to obliterate
the moral distinction between national armed forces personnel and
mercenaries? Are “employee warriors” more or less likely to conduct
themselves in accordance with the principles of Just War Theory? Are they
more or less likely to show organizational commitment and loyalty? UNSW
Canberra is offering a PhD Scholarship to a suitably qualified candidate
interested in pursuing these and related questions.

The successful applicant, subject to admission to the UNSW Canberra PhD
program, will be awarded a Research Training Scholarship with an annual
tax-free stipend of AUD$26,392. This scholarship is for a period of 3 years,
subject to satisfactory progress reviews along the way. Applicants should
hold a Masters degree or an undergraduate qualification with first class
honours, preferably in ethics/philosophy, politics, or a cognate discipline.

For further information please contact:

Ned Dobos
Email: n.dobos@adfa.edu.au
Phone: +61 2 6268 6273

Military ethics conference at West Point

Details here. 

Conference in Cambridge

War & Strife in Ancient Philosophy (being the fifth meeting 2015 Graduate Conference in Ancient
Philosophy)

Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge, 27th-28th March 2015.

Keynote Talks:

Lesley Brown (Oxford) ‘Philosophy as warfare? Plato’s Gigantomachia and other battles’

Angie Hobbs (Sheffield) 'The End of War? Heraclitus' Challenge and Plato's Response.'

Graduate Talks:

Jordan Corwin (University of Notre Dame) 'Strife and Justice from Hesiod to Parmenides'

Vincent Peluce (Central European University) 'Logos, Strife and Opposites in Heraclitus' Fragments'

Silvio Marino (University of Naples Federico II) 'Anomalia and Anomoiotes: Strife as Logical Principle
in Plato and Hippocratic Authors'

Pierre Ponchon (University of Tours) 'War as Principle? Plato against Thucydides and Heraclitus'

Grant Dowling (Columbia University) 'The City of Pigs as an Alternative Model of Justice in the
Republic'

Romeo Domdii Cliff (KU Leuven) 'War and Virtue in the Critias'

The conference programme, and details on how to register, might be found here:
https://sites.google.com/site/waraphil2015/


For any queries, please email Michael Withey at mpw44@cam.ac.uk

New paper by Charles H. Pence on military ethics

Here Pence argues that the military's use of genomics must be guided by an understanding of the connection between genotype and phenotype. However this is something too challenging to do.