Institute for Human Sciences

Missile strikes on Ukrainian cities are targeting civilians. Such punishing retaliation for the loss of Moscow’s vital bridge to Crimea further betrays Putin’s brutal tactics. In times of escalating war crimes, centuries old questions about peace and freedom are ever more urgent. What would be a rational horizon for collective hope over time?

War becomes the twin of communication: the development of media has not only changed how warfare is reported, but also how it’s fought. The working rule of the warriors is to spread strategic information and disinformation at every instant. And media workers are culpable too, for abusing the genre of breaking news reporting to magnetise audiences and advertisers, doing it at a great symbolic cost.

In true Stalinist manner, Russian culture is being weaponized in the war against Ukraine. But instead of cancelling Russian writers, should we read them with a critical eye – just like other European classics?

More than half a million Afghans were displaced in 2021, adding to many more forced to flee over decades of uninterrupted violence. But offers to accommodate Afghanistan’s ‘living dead’ are often conditional on obscure definitions of neediness.