Transitional Justice Thinking: Tools or Principles?

Professor Margaret Walker of Marquette University speaks on transitional justice as a part of the celebration of A Theory of Truces by Suffolk University’s Nir Eisikovits. This lecture will be held in Sargent Hall at Suffolk University, Room 385.

The book is about truces. It focuses on unsatisfying, partial, ‘patched up’ ceasefire arrangements; it describes the risks we take and the opportunities we miss when we insist that the only acceptable way to end political violence is to end it comprehensively, once and for all, with a peace for the ages. Eisikovits argues that our thinking about war’s end is trapped in a false dichotomy between the ideas of war and peace. A Theory of Truces breaks free from that dichotomy and helps us understand how wars actually end and how we can diminish their viciousness when they cannot be ended.