luffton professor discusses 'just war' at Friday Colloquium

Rudi Kauffman, assistant professor of restorative justice, will present "Cursed are the Just Warmakers," at 4 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6, in Stutzman Lecture Hall in Centennial Hall, as part of Bluffton University's Friday Colloquium Series. The event is free and open to the public.

"Cursed are the Just Warmakers" is a presentation inspired by Kauffman's research on just war theory and its application. His research focuses on war conflicts in the 1990s where there is a consistent pattern of early withdrawal from "just conflict" which, in turn, leads to an ongoing degradation of human development indicators.

He discovered that relatively "unjust" wars appear to procure somewhat more just outcomes in terms of improved human development indicators. Cases under Kauffman's' consideration include the Gulf War, operations in Somalia, non-intervention in Rwanda and NATO actions in Kosovo.

Kauffman's presentation will focus on the preliminary, predominately qualitative analysis that suggested this trend of "unjust" wars having more just outcomes, and he will outline the methodology that is being used to explore the trend more carefully.