CFP // 14th SUMMER SCHOOL ON THE ETHICS OF WAR //8-10 JULY 2024- University of Minho, Braga

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Sara Cruz

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Jan 24, 2024, 2:12:39 PM1/24/24

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CALL FOR PAPERS

14th Summer School on the Ethics of War

8-10 July 2024

University of Minho, Braga

Organizing Committee: CEPS (Center for Ethics, Politics and Society).

Convenors: Sara Cruz; Pedro Silva; Roberto Merrill.

Venue: Auditorium of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Minho, Braga.

The enduring civil wars in Syria, Yemen and Ethiopia, the continuing Russian invasion of Ukraine and the recent Hamas terrorist attacks and ensuing Israel retaliation in Gaza seem to render prospects for global peace nothing but a utopic mirage. As war turns into a 24/7 reality show, a pervasive tendency towards polarization often neglects the more nuanced and complex genesis of conflicts and their underlying moral issues. This summer school will explore a range of issues in the ethics of war that have been given new salience by these ongoing conflicts.

The current zeitgeist manifests debates that have preoccupied many contemporary just war theorists. Russian soldiers in Ukraine have been widely depicted as mere murderers, irrespective of their compliance with in bello norms, in line with the reductivist just war theorists. Reductivist accounts contest traditional martial virtues such as obedience to orders, arguing that combatants ought to refuse to fight in unjust wars. Nearly two years into the war, and with no end in sight, Ukraine faces a drastic decline in the number of willing recruits. The fact that many Ukrainian and Russian men are now trying to evade compulsory enlistment – by either trying to flee the country or bribing authorities and/or health professionals to exempt them – challenges deeply-entrenched ideas regarding the legitimacy of conscription, particularly within existing and aspiring liberal democracies. The acquisition and deployment of newer military technologies, such as Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles or Lethal Autonomous Weapons, as well as the resort to private military companies (such as the infamous Wagner Group) have emerged as tempting, if morally controversial, solutions to the shortage of combatants on both sides.
Meanwhile, Hamas’ terrorist attacks laid bare the shortcomings of Israel’s counterterrorism strategy, exposing its failure to address the conditions that enable radicalization to thrive. Inasmuch as the post-9/11 narrative about the duty of the righteous to battle evil echoes through Netanyahu’s words, the brunt of the war against Hamas falls on Palestinian civilians as international calls for restrain are met with accusations of antisemitism or reminders that Hamas’s actions triggered the war. The conflict starkly demonstrates the hazards of warfare between states and non-state groups, such as the eliding of civilian and military targets and infrastructure, along with the perils of urban warfare. Commentators frequently assert Israel’s right and duty to defend its citizens, as well as the need deter other prospective aggressors in the region. Such claims bear on theoretical debates about whether one can ‘combine’ putatively just causes and, if so, how this bears on the proportionality of the war. The war in Gaza also brings to the fore the role of historic injustice as a genesis of conflict and main source of intergenerational cycles of violence. This, we believe, calls for a deeper interdisciplinary analysis of the relationship between intergenerational justice and the ethics of war that could potentially be valuable for both fields.

With such unsettling circumstances in mind, this event hopes to generate an open and fruitful discussion for scholars, students, and policy makers on war ethics to discuss old and pressing issues that permeate contemporary debates. Possible topics might include, but are not limited to:

Fighting unjust wars and obeying unjust orders: is the Nuremberg defense still a legitimate moral defense? Should it still be a legal defense?
The morality of conscription.
Whether and when states are allowed to employ private military contractors.
The ethics of using Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles, Autonomous Lethal Weapons, Killer Robots, and Military Artificial Intelligence.
The challenges of asymmetric and urban warfare, such as adhering to the principles of discrimination and proportionality
The moral status of human shields
Intergenerational justice, historic injustice, and the ethics of war
Military virtues in contemporary warfare
Information warfare and propaganda

The school will host Professors Helen Frowe, Susanne Burri, Jeff MacMahan and Isaac Taylor.

Abstracts of no longer than 300 words and a short bio (in English) must be submitted until 31 March 2024 through this form. After being peer reviewed, selected participants can expect to be notified by the end of April. For more information regarding the school, please visit the event’s website https://summerschoolethicsofwar.weebly.com/ , which we’ll keep updating. In case you have any other doubts or questions feel free to send us an email to ssethics...@gmail.com .