Moral Responsibility for the Legacies of War

Holy Cross alumnus Paul Walker '68 is international director of environmental security and sustainability for Green Cross International. He talks about the global stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction —nuclear, chemical, and biological — and the decades of national and international efforts to abolish them.

In brief presentations and moderated discussion, panelists David Cole, Avery Plaw and Gregory Johnson consider the wisdom of the Obama Administration's policy on drone warfare. Cole is professor of law at Georgetown University and author of "The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable" (2009). Plaw is associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where he co-created the UMass DRONE Targeted Killing Database, an online resource that tracks casualties by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan. Gregory Johnson is Near East Studies Scholar at Princeton University and a former Fulbright Fellow in Yemen. He is author of "The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia," published last year.

U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Matthew Hoh, a former Foreign Service officer and former Marine Corps captain, discuss the current situation and future outlook for the war in Afghanistan. McGovern has been a leading critic of U.S. military policy in Afghanistan, coordinating bipartisan initiatives focused on the human and financial costs of the war, proposals for safely withdrawing U.S. forces from the country, and promoting a political solution for Afghanistan and the region. Hoh was the first U.S. official known to resign his post in protest over the Afghan war. Today, he is a senior fellow with the Center for International Policy.

University Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown, Nancy Sherman talks about the moral burdens borne by soldiers returning from war and suggests that feelings of guilt may actually be a therapeutic part of their re-integration in civilian life. Sherman, who is author of The Untold War, spoke at Holy Cross on November 18.

Distinguished theologian and Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University Divinity School, asserts that the greatest sacrifice of war may be sacrificing our unwillingness to kill. The talk was given as part of the Deitchman Family Lectures on Religion and Modernity.

Paula Newberg is director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University and a former advisor to the United Nations.

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.

A panel discussion on post-traumatic stress disorder features 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.

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.

Diane Fox, visiting professor of History and Anthropology at Holy Cross, discusses the use of the chemical defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam war and how that treatment continues to affect the lives of the Vietnamese people and U.S. veterans today.

Rev. J. Bryan Hehir is 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.