Institute board member Saskia Sassen and the Committee on Global Thought have organized Cities and the New Wars, a two-day conference on September 25th and 26th, 2009 at Wood Auditorium in Avery Hall, Columbia University.

The multiple meanings of the new urban wars: asymmetric armed conflict, US Army training for the “urban enemy,” forms of economic violence that kill, cities and urban space as a technology for war, reapropriating the city of fear, civil war refugees and their flight from and to cities, measuring human rights violations during war.

The limits of power and of war: the role of the civic, war and law, the growing global web of interdependencies — all can contest the most powerful states and all can undermine the idea of victory in war. Conditions under which powerlessness becomes complex and transcends mere victimhood.