Abstract

Freedom and violence are often assumed to be inextricably tied to each other. Several reasons are offered for this inextricability, such as  the assumed zero-sum life-and-death struggles for freedom, violence as incidental and accidental, as well as violence as an intentional catalyst for freedom struggles. In this talk, however, I will argue that the fundamental reason for the inextricability of freedom and violence is the notion of responsibility.

Speaker

Dr. Irm Haleem is an Assistant Professor in the Strategic Studies Program at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University. She is also the Coordinator of the MSc (IR) program at RSIS, School Academic Integrity Officer at RSIS, and Manager (Research and Publications) at International Center of Political Violence and Terrorism Studies (ICPVTR) at RSIS. She is the author of the book, The Essence of Islamist Extremism: Recognition through violence, freedom through death (Routledge 2012, paperback 2014), and editor and contributing author of Normalization of Violence: Conceptual analysis and reflections from Asia (Routledge 2020). She is currently finishing another book manuscript, Contradictions of Freedom, which is under contract with Routledge and expected to be published in 2021, and for which she was offered a research grant from the United States Air Force (USAF), Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development (AOARD) during 2015-2016. Dr. Haleem has also been an invited TEDx speaker at TEDxNTU in October 2017, ‘Here’s to the Game Changers’, where she spoke on ‘Love, Hope, and Human Agency’.

Moderator

Kumar Ramakrishna is Associate Professor, Associate Dean for Policy Studies, Research Adviser to National Security Studies Programme and Head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He has published in numerous internationally refereed journals and co-edited two well-received books on counter-terrorism, The New Terrorism: Anatomy, Trends and Counter-Strategies (2002) as well as After Bali: The Threat of Terrorism in Southeast Asia (2004). He is also the author of numerous single-authored books including Original Sin? Revising the Revisionist Critique of the 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore (2015) and Singapore Chronicles: Emergency (2016).