Please join the Russia and Eurasia Program and the LLM program at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University for a conversation with Professor Janina Dill of the Blavatnik School of Government of the University of Oxford.

In Western countries, war support has been shown to follow cost-benefit calculations, resembling the moral principle of proportionality. A categorical position, in contrast, means supporting self-defense regardless of the costs. To evaluate which moral principal populations facing external aggression follow, Professor Dill will place the law of armed conflict in the context of her 2022 Ukraine study, where she conducted an experiment with 1,160 Ukrainians about their perceptions of self-defense against Russia. Her study focused on several questions, such as ‘How do populations facing external aggression view the costs and benefits of self-defense? How do Ukrainians think about the costs and benefits of self-defense against Russia? Do they make proportionality calculations ad bellum? She will speak on her findings and how this study is the first experimental evidence that populations resisting external aggression do not subject war outcomes to cost-benefit calculations.

The event is open to the public. Please register via the Microsoft Form here to attend the event in person or let us know if you would like to attend virtually. Please contact us with any questions you might have about the event or if you would like to submit discussion questions for the speaker in advance. Refreshments will be provided. Please let us know if you have any dietary restrictions, and we will do our best to accommodate you.

Janina Dill is a Professor of Global Security at the Blavatnik School of Government of the University of Oxford. She is also a Fellow at Trinity College and Co-Director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict (ELAC). Her research concerns the role of law and morality in international relations, specifically in war. In one strand of research, she develops legal and philosophical theories about how international law can be an instrument of morality in war, albeit an imperfect one. This work speaks to debates in just war theory and international law. Another strand of her research seeks to explain how moral and legal norms affect the reality of war. She contributes to debates about the capacity of international law to constrain military decision-making. She also studies how normative considerations can shape public opinion on the use of force and the attitudes of conflict-affected populations, for instance, in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Iraq.