This year’s Keim Lecture saw students, professors, and EMU community members gather to listen to Dr. Kristina Hook’s presentation on the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Her presentation, entitled “Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine: Atrocity Crimes, Accountability, and Pursuing a Sustainable Just Peace,” shared the story of both sides of the war, looking at everything that has happened over the past couple hundred years. Hook’s long list of accomplishments includes serving as a U.S. Department of State policy advisor for mass atrocity prevention, a nonresident research fellow at the Marine Corps University, and a U.S. Presidential Management Fellow. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Conflict Management at Kennesaw State University while extensively researching the conflict in Eastern Europe.
Political Science Professor Ji Eun Kim is the person who arranged for Hook to come and speak at the Keim lecture. Kim has known Hook since graduate school, and expressed a desire to invite her so that EMU could hear an expert talk about the Russian Ukrainian war. Kim said, “students were wanting to hear a panel on the Ukrainian Russian war. When the Keim lecture came around this year I thought it would be the perfect time to have Hook come and talk about Russia and Ukraine.” Kim also said that she is on the list of banned people in Russia and that her work is not allowed to be read in Russia.
Senior Thomas Erickson expressed, “Russia Ukraine has kind of fallen off of everybody’s radar and I think it is important to think about what is happening and the next legal steps that people are taking.”
Professor of Peace Building, Development and Global Studies Tim Seidel shared, “I am happy that somebody who is on the same writing project as me and Ji Eun was able to come and talk at EMU.” Seidel went on to say “Her conversation on international law and the role it plays is important.”
Junior Meredith Lehman stated “The opportunity to hear about the Russia-Ukraine war from an expert in the field of human rights provided so many important insights. There is a tendency in popular culture and media to minimize the scale and nuance of a given conflict. This lecture provided so much important context regarding the history of atrocities wrought upon Ukraine by Russia, such as Holodomor: the targeted starvation of more than 3 million Ukrainians by Russia.”
Lehman continues “We also tend to frame the key actors only in terms of their organizational or national identity and dismiss the impact war has on real, individual people’s lives. While Dr. Kristina Hook discussed the war from a “macro” level, she also took time to acknowledge stories of Ukranian resistance, strength, and hope in such a dark time.
Professor of Visual & Communication Arts Jerry Holsopple said, “it was nice to see this issue looked through the lens of a not quite a prosecutor but an international law expert as opposed to the personal stories that I am used to.”
The Keim Lecture series was started in 2013 by History professor and head of the history and political science department, Mary Spurnger. She wanted to start it as an equivalent to the lectures that different STEM majors do. She wanted the history department to have its equivalent of that. The lecture series is named after former professor and dean here at EMU, Albert Keim.
Seidel left us with a question: “what is the relationship between scholars, anthropologists, political scientists and the state and how their knowledge can be put to use in making policy and history of the state using knowledge from academics to further national interests.”
