Mark Juergensmeyer is director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, professor of sociology, and affiliate professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is an expert on religious violence, conflict resolution and South Asian religion and politics, and has published more than two hundred articles and twenty books, including the recently-released Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State. His widely-read Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, is based on interviews with religious activists around the world--including individuals convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, leaders of Hamas, and abortion clinic bombers in the United States--and was listed by the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times as one of the best nonfiction books of the year. 

One of Juergensmeyer's earlier books, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State, covers the rise of religious activism and its confrontation with secular modernity. It was named by the New York Times as one of the notable books of the year. 

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website.

Abstract: In the lecture I will address the criticism that is current among some soldiers and academic strategists these days that if you try to fight an asymmetric war in accordance with the US rules of engagement or the requirements of just war theory, you will lose the war. I will argue that the good guys can win (not that they will certainly win) without adopting the methods of the bad guys.

One of America’s foremost political thinkers, Michael Walzer has written about a wide variety of topics in political theory and moral philosophy, including political obligation, just and unjust war, nationalism and ethnicity, economic justice, and the welfare state. He has played a critical role in the revival of a practical, issue-focused ethics and in the development of a pluralist approach to political and moral life. 

Walzer’s books include Just and Unjust Wars, On Toleration, and Arguing About War. He has served as editor of the political journal Dissent for more than three decades. Currently, he is working on issues having to do with international justice and the new forms of welfare and also on a collaborative project focused on the history of Jewish political thought.

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website.

Cecile Fabre is a political and moral philosopher whose work is located in Anglo-American normative thought. She is a tutorial fellow in Philosophy at Lincoln College, and a lecturer in the Faculty of Philosophy, at Oxford University. Prior to moving to Oxford, she held the Chair in Political Theory at Ednburgh University, and was a Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the London School of Economics.

Fabre has written on distributive justice, rights, democracy, prostitution, organ transfers and surrogacy contracts. Her current work is on the ethics of war and recently completed the first of a two-volume research monograph. The first volume (published by OUP in the summer of 2012), defends a cosmopolitan theory of the just war. The second volume aims to defend a cosmopolitan account of the transition from war to peace and of peace after war.

Fabre is also on the steering committees of two research centres in Oxford, the Programme on the Changing Character of War and the Oxford Institute for the Ethics and Law and Armed Conflicts.

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website

"The Fixer:The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi" is a feature-length documentary that follows the relationship between an Afghan interpreter and his client, American journalist Christian Parenti. This intimate portrait of two colleagues shifts dramatically when Ajmal is kidnapped along with an Italian reporter. The situation goes from bad to worse as foreign powers pressure for fast results, the Afghan government bungles its response and the specter of Taliban power looms in the background. What follows is the tragic story of one man forgotten in the crossfire: a brutal allegory of the proud land and perilous misadventure that is Afghanistan.

Following the screening, Ian Olds (the film's Director) will be in conversation with Robert Crews (History, Stanford).

This event is sponsored by the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREEES). It is free and open to the public. 

The Fixer / View the trailer

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website.

Priya Satia's research interests span modern British cultural and political history, colonialism and imperialism, the experience and practice of war, technology and culture, human rights and humanitarianism, the state and institutions of government, arms trade, political economy of empire, and environmental history.

Satia was raised in Los Gatos, California and educated at Stanford, the London School of Economics, and the University of California, Berkeley where she earned her Ph.D. in 2004.  She is currently Assistant Professor of History at Stanford where she teaches courses on modern Britain and the British Empire.

Satia's latest book Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East has been the recipient of several book prizes including the 2009 AHA-Pacific Coast Branch Book Award, the AHA Herbert Baxter Adams Book Prize in 2009, and the 2010 Pacific Coast Conference of British Studies Book Prize.

Her work can also be found in academic journals such as the American Historical Reviewand Past and Present. Her article, “The Defense of Inhumanity: Air Control in Iraq and the British Idea of Arabia” won the Article Prize of the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies for 2005-2006 and the 2007 Walter D. Love Prize of the North American Conference on British Studies. 

Satia is currently researching the manufacture, trade, and use of small arms in the British empire for her book project, "Guns: The True History of the British Empire."

More information TBA. 

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website.

"Beyond Terror: America After bin Laden"

Lawrence Wright is an author, screenwriter, playwright, and a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. His history of al-Qaeda, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, was published to immediate and widespread acclaim, spending eight weeks on The New York Times best seller list and being translated into twenty-five languages. It was nominated for the National Book Award and won the Lionel Gelber Award for nonfiction, the Los Angeles Times Award for History, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. The NYU School of Journalism recently honored the book as one of the ten best works of journalism in the previous decade.

Wright will be in conversation with Tobias Wolff (English) and Martha Crenshaw (Center for International Security and Cooperation).

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website.

On October 3, Karl Eikenberry, the former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, will deliver this year's inaugural Payne Distinguished Lecture at Cemex Auditorium at the Knight Management Center.

The public address will be given in conjunction with a private, two-day conference that will bring to Stanford an international group of political scientists, economists, lawyers, policy-makers, and military experts to examine from a comparative perspective problems of violence, organized crime, and governance in Mexico. 

The conference will bring together a multidisciplinary group of political scientists, economists, and lawyers, together with policy makers and military experts in Mexico and the United States, seeking to provide better answers about how to confront drug-related violence and strengthen the rule of law and state capacity in Mexico.

While the focus is on Mexico, we believe that sharing research strategies and findings from other settings, notably Colombia, Brazil, and Afghanistan, will contribute to the debate on the current state and future trajectory of Mexico’s situation.

The conference seeks to foster an exchange of ideas based on the analysis of various actors in contentious environments, including, but not limited to, drug trafficking organizations. Examining the mechanisms behind the violence in Mexico from a comparative perspective will bring us closer to developing constructive policy recommendations to reduce violence in Mexico.

Mr. Karl Eikenberry will deliver a keynote address at the end of the day on Thurs., Oct. 3rd, and that part of the event will be open to the public.