The Herbert C. Kelman Seminar on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution presents:
The Fog of Victory
A discussion with:
Gabriella Blum
Rita E. Hauser Professor of Human Rights
and Humanitarian Law, Harvard Law School
Monday, March 9, 2020
4:30-6:00 p.m.
Pound Hall 100
1563 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA
Free and open to the public. Light refreshments provided.
About the event:
Though much progress has been made in recent decades to flesh out the rules on how we fight, much less progress has been made in answering the question, what we fight for. Liberal democracies who wage war today often fail to articulate a coherent vision of what they aim to achieve or how their interests would be satisfied through war. In other words, while the means of war have become more constrained and subject to strict regulation, the goals of war are as malleable and varied as they ever were. Exacerbating matters are substantial financial and business interests in political decision-making about armed conflicts. These observations help explain the phenomenon of ‘forever wars,’ as well as illuminate the challenges for conflict resolution.
About the Speaker:
Gabriella Blum is the Rita E. Hauser Professor of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at Harvard Law School, specializing in public international law, the law of armed conflict, international negotiations, and counterterrorism. She is also the Faculty Director of the Program on International Law and Armed Conflict and a member of the Program on Negotiation Executive Board.
Prior to joining the Harvard faculty in the fall of 2005, Blum served for seven years as a Senior Legal Advisor in the International Law Department of the Military Advocate General’s Corps in the Israel Defense Forces, and for another year as a Strategy Advisor to Israel’s National Security Council.
Blum is a graduate of Tel-Aviv University (LL.B. (’95), B.A. (Economics) (’97)) and of Harvard Law School (LL.M. (’01) and SJD (’03)).
She is the author of The Future of Violence: Robots and Germs, Hackers and Drones – Confronting a New Age of Threat (Basic Books, 2015) (co-authored with Benjamin Wittes and recipient of the Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize), Laws, Outlaws, and Terrorists (MIT Press, 2010) (co-authored with Philip Heymann and recipient of the Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize), and Islands of Agreement: Managing Enduring Armed Rivalries, (Harvard University Press, 2007), as well as journal articles in the fields of public international law, international negotiations, and the law and morality of war.
She has been awarded the Carnegie Fellowship to work on a book manuscript entitled “The Fog of Victory”.
About the Herbert C. Kelman Seminar Series:
The Herbert C. Kelman Seminar on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution series is sponsored by the Program on Negotiation, The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and Boston area members of the Alliance for Peacebuilding. The theme of the Kelman Seminar is “Negotiation, Conflict and the News Media”.
For more information, contact Donna Hicks at dhicks@wcfia.harvard.edu.
