Navin Bapat and Jeff Spinner-Halev will explain the origins of the current conflict, assess the strategic aims of key political actors in the conflict, and assess the ethics of the combatants' tactics using the laws of war. This event is co-sponsored by the UNC Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, and the Program for Public Discourse.

Jeff Spinner-Halev teaches political theory in the department of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is the Kenan Eminent Professor of Political Ethics. He has a B.A. and PhD from the University of Michigan, both in political science. He regularly teaches the course at Carolina on the Ethics of Peace, War and Defense. His research focuses on the tensions that arise within contemporary liberal and democratic theory, and between theory and practice. His most recent book (co-authored with Elizabeth Theiss-Morse) is Respect and Loathing in American Democracy: Polarization, Moralization, and the Undermining of Equality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming).

Navin Bapat is the Dowd Professor of Peace and War in political science and the chair of the curriculum of peace, war, and defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received a B.A. in political science from the University of Michigan in 1998 and pursued graduate studies at Rice University, where he received an M.A. and a PhD in political science. Professor Bapat’s research interests include examining conflicts involving violent non-state actors, such as insurgencies and terrorist campaigns, using formal and empirical methods. He is also involved an ongoing project examining the use and the effectiveness of economic sanctions. His book, Monsters to Destroy: Understanding the War on Terror, was published with Oxford University Press.