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Moral Responsibility for the Legacies of War

Vietnam to Iraq

Just War theory, a doctrine of military ethics that developed out of Catholic tradition, offers articulate perspectives on when it is allowable to go to war, and how one ought to behave in war, but it has far less to say about what obligations follow afterwards. This four-part symposium, held during February 2009, was an opportunity to think about those moral obligations, and to address specific legacies of war, such as the environmental impact of Agent Orange and forms of post-traumatic stress.

 

Click on the title of each talk below for more information, links to audio podcasts and to read all comments.

February 3, 2009
Moral Frameworks for Thinking About the Legacies of War, by Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Religion and Public Life at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and former Dean of the Harvard Divinity School.

February 10, 2009
Agent Orange: Consciousness and Conscience - Diane Fox, Visiting Professor of History and Anthropology.

February 17, 2009
U.S. Veterans Returning from the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a panel discussion on post-traumatic stress disorder featuring Brian P. Marx, Ph.D., National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; Bryan P. Shea, a military psychologist who completed three tours of duty in Iraq seeing soldiers in the field; and Bryan Adams, an Iraq War veteran and Purple Heart recipient who is the face of a public awareness campaign for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

February 19, 2009
Wrap-Up Discussion: Where do we go from here? - Margaret A. Post, director of the Donelan Office for Community-Based Learning, moderates a discussion with student panelists Courtney Nicholson '10, Peter McMurray '09, Grace Campion '09, and Alec Scott '09.