Storytelling is very important. It is through context and relations that we understand the importance of human dignity. The concept means nothing as an abstraction. It's important for us to understand why people do the things they do, including the… — Payam Akhavan Copy Share Image
I hate the tribal hatred thesis - in Yugoslavia and Rwanda and places like that they kill each other because that's just what people do there. I think it's profoundly ignorant. I was astonished when Samuel Huntington wrote his famous clash of civilizations essay in response to the Yugoslavian war. I was on the streets in Sarajevo and every other… — Payam Akhavan Copy Share
Helping survivors of residential schools in Canada is not the same as the UN sending in peacekeepers to prevent the genocide in Rwanda. But… — Payam Akhavan Copy Share Image
We need to sacrifice something. And this is what I find lacking. We want to construct an image of ourselves as virtuous but we… — Payam Akhavan Copy Share Image
The reason why the war ended in Bosnia was not because of amnesty but because a combined Croat-Bosnian offensive defeated the Serbs on the… — Payam Akhavan Copy Share Image
Criminal trials are fundamentally about individual accountability whereas truth commissions are less about the guilt of the perpetrator and more about the suffering of… — Payam Akhavan Copy Share Image
Storytelling is very important. It is through context and relations that we understand the importance of human dignity. The concept means nothing as an… — Payam Akhavan Copy Share Image
“There can be no meaningful change if we choose to look down at the arena of anguish from thirty thousand feet.” — Payam Akhavan Copy Share Image
In Yugoslavia we were told we were not only naive idealists in wanting war criminals to be prosecuted but that we were actually standing… — Payam Akhavan Copy Share Image
There are realities that one needs to deal with, but very often what we are told is political reality is merely cynicism. One could… — Payam Akhavan Copy Share Image
When we deconstruct how radical evil occurs we realize that it is anything but spontaneous combustion. You need pyromaniacs. — Payam Akhavan Copy Share Image
