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.