Visions Lecture Series
Satisfying Victims and Healing Societies: The Promises of Justice after Extreme Violence
Abstract
Justice meted out in domestic courts is assumed to promote social healing and quell the desire for revenge felt by victims of violence. Mass atrocity, genocide, terrorism and other types of extreme violence have spawned new approaches to justice, such as extrajudicial proceedings and international tribunals. Drawing from personal experience as a survivor of a terror attack and anthropological research on responses to extreme violence in the United States, Europe and Africa, Hirsch will explore several emerging approaches to justice that seek to fulfill the expectations of victims and societies. At this juncture, in pursuing justice for the world’s worst crimes, should we be more unilateralist or more universalist, more modest or more aggressive?


