Category Archives: The Middle East

Teaching Skepticism in Kyiv and Nablus

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This is a new piece by me in Public Seminar: “Teaching Skepticism in Kyiv and Nablus.”

It’s partly autobiographical (discussing my visits to Ukraine and the West Bank in 2025) and partly philosophical. I argue that skepticism supports compassion and commitment, when they might seem opposed.

It begins:

In 2025, I gave lectures and classes in Kyiv, Ukraine, and at two Palestinian universities in the occupied West Bank.

I have lived a tame life, and these were relatively intense experiences for me. 

As I had anticipated, Kyiv was heavily bombed while I visited, and I taught in a bomb shelter. In the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank—a zone of intensely concentrated poverty—I watched children literally playing with fire in the darkness, carrying burning garbage to build a make-believe lethal trap for the Israeli soldiers who frequently raid the camp later at night. Many of the walls are plastered with the photographs and names of armed young men (five to ten years older than the kids on the street) who have been killed.

I was invited to visit these universities by people who thought that their students might benefit from connections with a senior American academic. My best moment was when I demystified American financial aid for 65 Palestinian undergraduates who showed up to have office hours with me. 

I offered a lecture in each location on a philosophical theme: how to think about happiness.

a crime against humanity

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Today, the elected leader of the United States said, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

Even before we learn what actually happens, it is clear that the threat was a crime against humanity that will permanently mark the history and the reputation of our republic.

These are the two elements of the crime of genocide in Article II of the Genocide Convention (ratified by the United States, with the signature of Ronald Reagan):

  1. A mental element: the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”; and
  2. A physical element, which includes specific acts that include “killing members of the group,” “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,” or “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Just as murder is a crime against a community, which removes an individual from the group, so genocide is a crime against humanity that removes a people or a civilization from the earth. And just as a threat to commit murder is a felony even if the murder is never committed, so a threat to commit genocide is a grave crime against humankind.

This President threatened genocide in order to force Iran to allow oil tankers to continue carrying the substance that is most responsible for global warming, after he had begun the sequence of events that caused the Strait to close in the first place.

As Americans, we might consider Karl Jaspers’ analysis of war guilt, which he presented to an very uncomfortable German audience during the winter of 1944-5:

  1. Criminal guilt is attributable to individuals who have broken specific laws. It merits individual punishment. Donald Trump is guilty in this sense. It is a much harder question whether military personnel bear criminal guilt for following orders, particularly if Trump’s threat turns out to be mainly bluster. It is also doubtful whether Trump will be found guilty in any tribunal. However, Jaspers’ argument implies that Trump should be condemned, not that he will be.
  2. Political guilt belongs to all members of a polity (a democracy or otherwise), because “Everybody is responsible for the way he is governed.” All Americans now bear political guilt for Trump’s actions, even if we have been organizing against him. This does not mean that we should feel personally ashamed or face punishment as individuals. In fact, to cultivate feelings of personal guilt or shame can be self-indulgent. Political guilt does mean that we have a responsibility to act in defense of humanity. We should also expect and be ready to pay a price for the isolation and marginalization of the United States.
  3. Moral guilt: This is what one ought to feel as a result of being connected to an evil, even if one wasn’t personally responsible for what happened. All else being equal, it is bad moral luck to be an American citizen right now, because that makes us morally inferior to citizens of many other countries. Moral guilt requires penance and renewal. We must change the context so that we can be better.
  4. Metaphysical guilt: Jaspers says, “There exists a solidarity among men as human beings that makes each co-responsible for every wrong and every injustice in the world, especially for crimes committed in his presence or with his knowledge.” This kind of guilt extends beyond the borders of the United States. I think one aspect of it is complicity. Billions of people will use (and will have to use) oil that will be cheaper if Trump’s threat works. Another aspect is self-awareness. We now know–if we didn’t know it already–that an educated and affluent population of free human beings can choose a leader who chooses to threaten another civilization with extermination. This is a fact about people. It would be convenient if it were only a fact about Americans, but we have learned that it is not. Our thinking about politics and ethics must be chastened by this reality about ourselves.

See also: Jaspers on collective responsibility and polarization;

Prisoner’s Dilemma in the Gulf

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Although many people are using principles of game theory to analyze the Trump/Iran war and to predict the next steps, I haven’t come across an explicit model. Any model drastically oversimplifies reality but also serves to clarify assumptions.

The model that I present is essentially a Prisoner’s Dilemma. For each side, it is better to continue deadly offensive operations than to cease, regardless of what the other side does. Therefore, the model predicts that the war will continue (bottom-right box) even though both sides would be somewhat better off with a mutual ceasefire (top-left). That’s how a Prisoner’s Dilemma works.

The model presumes that both sides have the capacity to continue offensive operations–that the US won’t run critically low on munitions and Iran will retain drones, missiles, mines, and possibly sleeper cells abroad. To the extent that the US and Israel have a plan, it is to destroy Iran’s military assets so that Iran cannot choose to continue to bomb or lay mines. I cannot assess whether this is possible, but it seems doubtful. The recent reduction in the tempo of Iranian strikes may simply reflect a strategy of operating for a longer period.

The model is symmetrical, which is misleading. The Iranian leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has already lost his father, wife, daughter, son-in-law, and 14-month-old granddaughter in a strike and could be killed himself. More than 1,000 Iranians (and probably many more) have died so far. Donald Trump is much safer, as are American citizens–presumably. On the other hand, Trump’s political fortunes are sensitive to exactly what happens in the war, whereas Khamenei and his team are trying to survive. For them, a difference in the length of the conflict or the number of casualties may be immaterial.

Another way that the model simplifies is by reducing the whole war to two parties. Israel is not shown. Nor are other major countries, such as Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and others. Also, the two sides are shown as if they were unitary, but there are internal conflicts on both sides. In fact, each leader may care most about the struggle with his own domestic opponents. However, to some extent, that dynamic is captured by the outcomes shown in the model. For example, each side benefits domestically from being able to claim victory credibly, and each side loses domestically if it cannot.

See also: making our models explicit; Brag, Cave and Crow: a contribution to game theory

notes from the West Bank

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I spent the Thanksgiving break in the West Bank (via Israel). I visited two Palestinian universities, Bethlehem and An-Najah. I presented at both institutions and met students, faculty, administrators, and alumni, hoping to create or strengthen relationships and perhaps contribute just a bit to Palestinian higher education. Collaborative relationships with outside colleagues represent “social capital” that can benefit an institution, and that’s what I wanted to offer.

In all, I met more than 100 Palestinians as well as two Israelis whom I admire. Thanks to kind and well-informed hosts in the West Bank, I also had the chance to observe significant aspects of the current situation there. My visit was brief; my observations are superficial. Nevertheless, my packed three and a half days in the West Bank left vivid memories that will take me a long time to process.

For instance, I recall the contrast between two scenes.

In the Balata refugee camp—a zone of intensely concentrated poverty—I watch children literally playing with fire in the darkness, carrying burning garbage to make a pretend lethal trap for Israeli soldiers who frequently raid the camp later at night. Many of the walls are plastered with the photographs and names of armed young men (five to ten years older than the kids on the street) who have been killed.

On the other hand, in a classroom at An-Najah, I meet with about 65 earnest and impressive students of disciplines from computer science and medicine to English literature who aspire to study abroad. For two hours (until a driver arrives to take me to Tel Aviv), they ask me questions about admissions, financial aid, different kinds of degrees, and how to prepare to be competitive.

I also vividly recall walking around the partly excavated archaeological site of Sebastia, formerly a palace and city where many Christians and Muslims believe that John the Baptist is buried. You step on scattered tesserae as you explore the hill, set in a classic West Bank landscape of olive orchards, scattered Palestinian villages and visible Israeli settlements, and military installations on the mountaintops.

Finally, I hear a sophisticated and nuanced conversation about strategies for improving gender equity in Palestine, addressing the importance of women leaders in civil society and government, the pros and cons of treating feminism as a distinct agenda, the relevance and limitation of legal rights, and—as one woman said—the pattern that men start wars and women pay the steepest price of war. I sense that this is a debate among colleagues who already know and respect one another’s views but who cannot quite agree—which is just how things should be in a university.

See also: Teaching Civics in Kyiv

Trump, Modi, Erdogan

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I am flying back to the USA after a meeting in Istanbul with activists and NGO leaders from six or more countries. (By the way, I don’t think that all of them could have met in the USA because of our government’s visa policies and treatment of visitors.)

One of the many benefits of the meeting was to challenge a framework that I have been using which treats leaders like Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan as examples of the same phenomenon. These men are both similar and different, and it’s important to keep the differences in mind.

All three (it seems to me) are national narcissists, meaning that they believe their own country is the best yet disrespected (Cislak & Cichocka 2023). All espouse a form of populism: the idea that they enjoy the united support of the true nation, whereas opponents and critics are enemies of the people. All identify a favored ethnic and/or religious majority as the authentic country and its rightful rulers.

All favor aggressive state economic interventions while favoring allied businesses and industries (and making money from these alliances). All prefer splashy infrastructure projects to providing consistently decent public services. To be generous, we could say that they each “see like a state” (Scott 1998). And they all use a similar toolkit. They don’t cancel elections or openly suspend (most) constitutional rights but rather prosecute opponents and use economic pressure against the producers of speech: publishers and universities (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018).

As for the differences:

Modi represents a century-old effort to establish Hindu supremacy in India. Islamophobia is central to this project (Bhatia 2024). It already inspires regular violence, and it has the potential to spark vast destruction. Modi’s party and government are disciplined. Their agenda is not only social control or personal profit but also redefining a nation in a way that would exclude 200 million of its citizens.

Erdogan, I think, began by opening Turkish politics and civil society to groups and perspectives that deserved representation, including but not limited to observant Muslims. He made appropriate reforms. He is the kind of leader who should have retired a decade ago, in which case he could now travel the international circuit as an elder statesman with some genuine contributions to his name. Alas, he crossed many bright lines by jailing opponents and crushing opposition, perhaps in part because he sincerely believes that he is indispensable. But his managerial record is now quite poor.

Trump represents political views that he did not invent. He espouses familiar forms of xenophobia, chauvinism, and aggrieved nationalism. But I interpret Trump as more transactional than his counterparts in Turkey and India. For many voters, he offers a deal: better economic outcomes in return for legal impunity, the ability to settle scores, praise and monuments, and lots of sheer cash.

Since Trump’s relationships are always self-interested, they are also relatively fragile. I think an economic downturn would break his implicit contract with voters, lowering his approval by 10 points, and that would make him an increasingly problematic ally for Republican politicians. I can see him being discarded (not necessarily impeached, but rendered a lame duck) in a way that I cannot quite see for the regimes represented by Modi or Erdogan.

Sources: Cislak, A., & Cichocka, A. (2023). National narcissism in politics and public understanding of science. Nature Reviews Psychology, 2(12), 740-750; James C . Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale, 1998)  Stevnb Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (Crown 2018), and Rahul Bhatia,, The New India (Abacus, 2025)

See also: national narcissism; countering selective harassment in the Trump Administration; Trump: personalist leader or representative of a right-wing movement?; the Constitution is crumbling etc.