In contrast to prevalent theories of "terrorism," Maney will present a contention-oriented approach to understanding political violence against civilians. To illustrate and to support this approach, the speaker will present findings from quantitative analyses of a multi-source database of civilian deaths taking place in Northern Ireland between 1966 and 2006. The talk will conclude with a discussion of the study’s implications for scholars and conflict transformation practitioners.

Although the Tet Offensive represented a major turning point in the Vietnam War, much of North Vietnam’s decision making surrounding the offensive remains unclear. Based on recently declassified materials from Vietnam, this paper reveals how North Vietnamese domestic politics and foreign relations influenced Hanoi’s strategy deliberation for the 1968 offensive.

The Student Peace Awards were initiated in 2013 by the Peace Studies Society student organization at The Ohio State University as a means of recognizing significant contributions by students to peace and justice. The 2014 Student Peace Awards will be part of a half-day long celebratory conference that will include workshops on compassionate communication, peace through service, and a panel discussion on bridging the gap between theory and practice in the nonviolent defense of human rights.

The contemporary CIA more closely resembles Hollywood's fictional portrayal than the institution envisioned by the Truman administration and Congress in 1947. During the initial Cold War years, a confluence of bureaucratic politics, individual initiatives, and strategic preferences rapidly and radically transformed the CIA's identity from an agency established to collect and analyze intelligence to one preoccupied with covert and paramilitary operations. This legacy of distorted purpose continues to plague the CIA today. With the onset of the Global War on Terror it has evolved into what journalists describe as a "Killing Machine." This talk by Richard H. Immerman traces this history and argues that the intelligence challenges of the 21st century demand that the CIA recommit itself to the "original intent" of its designers by rededicating itself to its core mission of analysis.

After September 11, 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation greatly increased its efforts at, and changed its approach to, counter-terrorism. This talk explores the abrupt rise and continuing persistence of official fears of terrorism. Important in this is the effect of the "threat matrix" that coordinates and drives the quest to follow up 5000 almost entirely fruitless "threats" each day, a process some in the FBI call "ghost-chasing." In the process, an estimate is made about how many terrorist acts would have had to have been committed in the United States but for the intelligence and policing efforts of the Bureau to justify its counter-terrorism expenditures. Included is an examination of a set of case studies of all the apparent Islamist extremist plots since 9/11 to inflict damage in the United States. Also explored: the potential efficacy of policing efforts using simple, if forceful, warnings to putative terrorists rather implanting informants among them.

Like the U.S.-Japan relationship, China’s Gordian knot with its only Northeast Asian ally, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, remains fundamentally stable even as it sits on the cusp of irreversible change. This presentation will investigate Beijing and Pyongyang’s mutual feelings of suppressed anger and ongoing dependency, beginning with a gloss on new documents from the PRC Foreign Ministry Archive focusing on overseas Chinese in North Korea and the peculiar regard of the Kim family (and the Korean Workers' Party) toward the Chinese Communist Party, allowing for a baseline of continuity in how we regard the relationship.

Aaron Friedberg examines the factors that appear to be impelling the United States and China towards a deepening geopolitical rivalry and the strategies that the two nations have devised for dealing with one another. He closes with a discussion of the most recent developments in Sino-American relations and an assessment of what may lie ahead.

In Fixing the Facts, Joshua Rovner explores the complex interaction between intelligence and policy and shines a spotlight on the problem of politicization. Major episodes in the history of American foreign policy have been closely tied to the manipulation of intelligence estimates. Rovner describes how the Johnson administration dealt with the intelligence community during the Vietnam War; how President Nixon and President Ford politicized estimates on the Soviet Union; and how pressure from the George W. Bush administration contributed to flawed intelligence on Iraq. He also compares the U.S. case with the British experience between 1998 and 2003, and demonstrates that high-profile government inquiries in both countries were fundamentally wrong about what happened before the war.

China's rapid development and Sino-American relations have a direct impact on the lives of just about everyone in the United States. CHINA Town Hall: Local Connections, National Reflections, is a national day of programming designed to provide Americans across the United States and beyond the opportunity to discuss these issues with leading experts.

The seventh annual CHINA Town Hall will be held on October 28, 2013, at 7 p.m. EDT. The National Committee is pleased to present this program, which will feature a live webcast with Madeleine Albright, the 64th United States secretary of state, followed by local presentations from onsite China specialists addressing topics of particular interest to the community. Each program is co-sponsored by the National Committee and a local organization(s). CHINA Town Hall is generously underwritten by the Starr Foundation.

Douglas MacLean is a professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research and teaching are primarily in ethics, and much of it focuses on philosophical issues in public policy.When philosophers think about morality, they often take for granted that pain and suffering are intrinsically bad. That happiness and pleasure are good, that pain and suffering are bad, constitute starting points for much thinking and theorizing about morality. Immanuel Kant famously questioned the intrinsic or unconditional goodness of happiness, but the badness of pain and suffering has an even stronger claim to be an axiom of moral philosophy and ethical theories. The assumption is that unless they are necessary means to greater happiness or good, pain and suffering should be avoided and minimized.

I will examine and challenge this common assumption. I will try to convince you that pain and suffering are woven into human life in ways that we cannot imagine eliminating without making our lives and much of what we value unrecognizable. If I can convince you of that, then I may also be able to convince you that thinking about morality should not begin with assumptions about what is intrinsically good or bad; rather, it should begin by exploring the ways that moral values are connected and never lose touch with our history and our practices, where both suffering and happiness have important roles to play.