War Archives - Public Seminar

Israel’s Grotesque Violation of Jewish Values

A new book by Peter Beinart, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza

March 3, 2025 • by Mitchell Abidor

Peter Beinart’s Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning (Knopf, 2025) is a book that will cause much outrage among some of its intended audience: fellow Jews. If there is one thing to which many Jews cleave, it is to our history of victimhood, and the purity that ...

Israel’s Grotesque Violation of Jewish Values

Migration

Social Research on Exile

Banishment, “refugeedom,” and the political problem of our time

September 4, 2024 • by Social Research

In the latest issue of Social Research (Vol. 92, No. 1), scholars explore the nature of exile. Some essays reflect on exile forced by war and political persecution, others on the difference between being an exile and being a refugee. TABLE OF CONTENTS Avishai Margalit, "Internal Exile and Politics"This essay has two ...

Interviews

“The gun has become a type of thinking”

A conversation about war with the Sudanese writer Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin

June 26, 2024 • by Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin and Anna Simone Reumert

Sudan needs a leader that is disconnected to this power. The “Messiah” in my novel about Darfur is not connected to any religion, he is a symbol of spirituality. The opposite of political Islam, which has ruled the country for so long....

Middle East & North Africa

Israel Has Weaponized Trauma. Should We Talk About It?

Mourning and motherland

June 20, 2024 • by Jordan Osserman

Within left-leaning circles, any attempt articulate an emotional tie to Israel is fraught—understandably, given the scandalous forms of censorship and repression facing Palestinian perspectives in the mainstream....

Israel Has Weaponized Trauma. Should We Talk About It?

Podcast

Without Mothers, There Is No War

A conversation with political scientist Cynthia Enloe about her book Twelve Feminist Lessons of War

March 19, 2024 • by Claire Potter

50 years of feminist scholarship also demonstrates that war does not occur without sexual assault, just as it cannot be prosecuted without civilian casualties. The idea that you can have war without rape, on all sides, is historically implausible....

Kinships

Traumatized Heroes

Living with wrongdoing

February 21, 2024 • by Helga Varden

Hope for the future is only possible if we choose peace by stopping the killing and resist the temptation of avenging heroism....

Activism

A Response to “Principles of Solidarity. A Statement”

Human dignity for all

November 22, 2023 • by Public Seminar

Solidarity means that the principle of human dignity must apply to all people. This requires us to recognize and address the suffering of all those affected by an armed conflict....

Europe & Central Asia

The Voice of Ukraine

“Break your heavy chains and water with the tyrants’ blood the freedom you have gained”

May 10, 2023 • by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed

For many in Ukraine, the war is not simply about the territory: it is about freedom and democracy, about the memory of identity eradication perpetrated by Russia....

Europe & Central Asia

Ukraine Is Reclaiming Land and Tracking Down Collaborators

In places regained by the Ukrainian army, police units look for saboteurs and collaborators, search for abandoned weapons and clear roads

May 9, 2023 • by Paweł Pieniążek

The village was occupied by the Russian army in March and was under their control until recently. ...

Ukraine Is Reclaiming Land and Tracking Down Collaborators

Europe & Central Asia

The Art of Misunderstanding

On how to preserve one’s dignity while keeping the attention of western institutions

January 12, 2023 • by Kateryna Botanova

The idea that the purpose of culture is reconciliation confronts Ukrainian cultural activists with a dilemma: how to preserve one’s dignity while keeping the attention of western institutions? ...

Europe & Central Asia

People’s War and Nuclear Fear: The Anti-War Left and Ukraine

A response to James Carroll’s reckoning with peace activism

October 26, 2022 • by Jeremy Varon

America was duty-bound to save Ukrainian lives, if at the expense of Ukraine’s sovereignty. But there is an uncomfortable arrogance to this argument, framed as tough love. Perhaps the Ukrainians themselves should determine what’s worth fighting and dying for, not the U.S....

People’s War and Nuclear Fear: The Anti-War Left and Ukraine

Europe & Central Asia

Robert Jay Lifton on Psychic Numbing and the Warning from Ukraine

The renewed threat of nuclear war—and the importance of distinguishing between fear and anxiety

October 25, 2022 • by James Carroll and Robert Jay Lifton

Nuclear complacency is multifaceted. A certain amount of nuclear fear is appropriate to our situation. When we give in to what you’re calling nuclear complacency, it’s because we have insufficient fear of what is actually dangerous....