Can We Trust Democracies?: September 11th, the War on Terror and “Humanitarian Intervention”

Dr Aidan Hehir, Security and International Relations Programme

‘It used to be said that facts speak for themselves. This is of course untrue.

The facts speak only when the historian calls on them; it is he who decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or context’. [1]

E.H. Carr

‘Americans may have no identity, but they do have wonderful teeth’.[2]

Jean Baudrillard

“September 11^th 2001” or “9/11”?

The magnitude of current events are rarely as obvious as was the case on September 11^th 2001. Millions around the world watching as the World Trade Center collapsed immediately sensed that this was the terrible dawn of a new era. September 11^th 2001, like all seminal dates in history, has come to denote far more than the terrorist attacks. The date itself has become popularly represented as “9/11”; this may seem like an innocuous abbreviation but while “September 11^th 2001” is a date, “9/11” is arguably a symbol, and symbols are by definition designed to convey a message. As Richard Jackson

Public Debate: "Assessing the Impact of 9/11 Ten Years On".

The Security and International Relations Programme is launching is seminar series this year with a roundtable discussion on the impact of September 11th 2001. The roundtable will involve a number of members from the Department of Politics and International Relations and all are welcome to come along and take part in the questions and answers. Details below.
Hope to see you there,
Aidan

6th October, 18:00, Fyvie Hall, Regent Street

"Assessing the Impact of 9/11 Ten Years On".

Roundtable Participants:

·         Dr Dibyesh Anand

·         Dr Ricardo Blaug

·         Professor David Chandler

·         Professor Roland Dannreuther

·         Dr Aidan Hehir

·         Dr Patricia Hogwood

·         Dr Thomas Moore

Kosovo - The Hazards of Intervention and Statebuilding

Click this link to view a seminar on the record of the international community's engagement with Kosovo since NATO's intervention in 1999.

'Where is the Human in Human-Centred approaches to Development?: A Foucauldian Critique of Amartya Sen’s ‘Development as Freedom’

Draft paper for 'Reading Michel Foucault in the Postcolonial Present: A Symposium', University of Bologna, Italy, March 3-4, 2011,

Professor David Chandler

This paper engages with Foucault’s critical exploration of shifts and transformations in liberal frameworks of governmental rationality to consider how our understanding of the human subject has been transformed within development discourses. here.

Upcoming Debate on Libya

"Intervention in Libya: Right or Wrong?"

Aidan Hehir, Senior Lecturer in International Relations and author of Humanitarian Intervention After Kosovo

Richard Seymour, Author of the Liberal Defence of Murder

6:30pm, Thursday 31st March, Portland Hall, Lower Titchfield Street

No booking necessary but event starts promptly. Hosted by the University of Westminster Political Debating Society, Socilaist Worker Student Society, and the International Development Society

Studentships for prospective PhD students

The Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster is pleased to offer two Studentships for prospective PhD students.

Applications are invited for the following awards which are tenable for up to three years for full-time study:

2 fee waivers (home/EU*) and £3,000 per year for 3 years

*Please note that only Home/EU students are eligible to apply

Libya and the Essential Irrelevance of the Responsibility to Protect

“Humanitarian intervention” briefly topped the international political agenda following the interventions in Kosovo and East Timor in 1999. It was soon eclipsed, however, by the War on Terror. Later, the lamentable international response to the slaughter in Darfur appeared to prove that “liberal interventionism” had lost all momentum. Current events in Libya, however, have reignited this debate as evidenced by a number of recent articles in The Guardian (Seumas Milne, March 2^nd, Timothy Garton-Ash, March 3^rd).