@mararevkin
Associate Professor of Law & Political Science @Duke. Conflict, migration, peacebuilding, transitional justice & humanitarian/development aid. Nonresident @carnegiedcg.bsky.social. Rhymes w/ @jonpetkun.bsky.social. Web: https://law.duke.edu/fac/revkin
Excited to be co-organizing the Multi-Method Conflict Consortium at Duke May 15-16 with @meganastewart.bsky.social & @dotanhaim.bsky.social! Advanced PhD candidates and postdocs are invited to apply for our funded Junior Fellowship, deadline March 10: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Very excited to be co-hosting with @dotanhaim.bsky.social & @meganastewart.bsky.social the Multi-Method Conflict Consortium (M2C2) Mini-Conference at Duke May 15-16! PhD candidates & postdoctoral fellows are invited to apply for our Junior Fellowship. Apply here by Mar. 10: forms.gle/Vy6h53639F8B...
Important reading from @saskiabr.bsky.social on threats to women's rights in the context of democratic backsliding: "...Antidemocratic actors intentionally use gender to polarize the public and delegitimize broader human rights and equality norms." @carnegiedcg.bsky.social
You can read my take on Trump's illegal invasion of Venezuela here: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...
🆕South Sudan is one of the most fragile states—but that fragility varies subnationally
@gabriellalevy2.bsky.social and @mararevkin.bsky.social led a Duke University team to create the Fragility Index, mapping this variation
Their @iom.int report shows how this novel index can inform recovery⤵️
... mostly children, who have been trapped in the camps since 2019, making it harder to advocate for the humanitarian aid & repatriation assistance that they desperately need. More on the difference between "closed camps" and prisons here: scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcont... [6/6]
alleged or convicted combatants & criminals. The @nytimes is correct on this point about camp residents: "[N]one ... have been charged with a crime." But conflating (1) prisons & (2) humanitarian closed camps contributes to stigmatization of the 43K civilians... www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/w... [5/6]
... to continue." Al-Hol is a "closed camp" with restrictions on movement that may constitute "de facto detention" under int'l law, as I explain here: scholarship.law.duke.edu/faculty_scho.... But "closed camps" are still humanitarian camps for civilians, not to be confused with prisons for [4/6]
Despite the presence of some known ISIS "family members" & even criminal infiltrators among the 43,250 civilians in Al-Hol & Roj camps, @StateDept correctly focuses on the need "to protect the camp’s fundamentally HUMANITARIAN status, enabling vital humanitarian assistance ... [3/6]
• Group 1 = 8,950 adults in prisons believed to be ISIS *combatants* including many captured in battle & already convicted;
• Group 2 = "43,250 *noncombatants*, including 25K children under 12" in humanitarian *camps* as described by @StateDept: www.state.gov/wp-content/u... [2/6]
I appreciate @nytimes reporting on this often-forgotten crisis in Syria, but the article makes a common mistake: conflating 2 *VERY* different populations & sites:
• (1) ISIS combatants in prisons
• (2) civilians, mostly children, in humanitarian "closed camps" ... [thread 1/6]
By this time next week, the estimated deaths due to the illegal destruction of USAID and the shuttering of its aid efforts will breach 400,000.
More than 260,000 will be children.
Source: www.bu.edu/sph/news/art...
ICYMI in a very bad news week: On 9/9, Israel ordered a complete evacuation of Gaza City; aside from clear violations of international law, this powerful visual story @josh-h.bsky.social shows how residents have nowhere to go: www.nytimes.com/interactive/... See also: www.reuters.com/world/middle...
Intentional starvation of civilians as a method of war is always a war crime. Non-reciprocity of international humanitarian law means that no amount of alleged aid diversion by Hamas could ever justify this. Horrifying but necessary reading, see also: www.btselem.org/sites/defaul... (1+ year ago)
We're announcing our Fall 2025 call for applications! Deadline to apply is August 14, feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
🚨FYI Search Committees!
The extraordinarily talented and kind @benckrick.bsky.social will be on the political science job market soon-ish and some lucky department should hire him while you still can!
We are grateful to the many Iraqis who shared their experiences with us and hope these findings will encourage more research on cumulative & reverberating effects of war on society, environment & cultural heritage that are not captured in casualty counts or other conventional measures of damage. 7/7
Our key finding is that these effects persists even after conditioning on personal exposure to harm, suggesting that civilian attitudes toward combatants are driven not only by direct victimization (which is already well-established), but also by *how* and *why* combatants caused these harms. 6/7
... to show that a "bundle" of changes in strategy, tactics, rules of engagement & composition of ground forces—which reflected less concern for protection of civilians in West Mosul—was associated with higher levels of destruction and more negative perceptions of the legitimacy of Iraqi forces. 5/7
East Mosul would be taken first, followed by West Mosul. This decision shaped the pattern of violence that followed & its devastating effects on the civilian population. We use survey, interview, & satellite data collected through multiple rounds of careful field research between 2018 & 2023 ... 4/7
suffered much more civilian harm than East Mosul. Why? The battle plan developed by Iraqi forces & the U.S.-led Coalition to recapture Mosul after 3 years of ISIL’s harsh rule was constrained by a geographical feature: the Tigris River, which divides the city & necessitated a 2-phased approach: 3/7
... described at the time as one of the most destructive since WWII (now tragically surpassed by Gaza). I was in Iraq for this research with @iom.int on displacement (iraq.iom.int/sites/g/file...) & everyone working on the humanitarian response was aware of a clear pattern: West Mosul had ... 2/7
Excited to share a new open-access article with @benckrick.bsky.social @jonpetkun.bsky.social in @iojournal.bsky.social, "Civilian Harm & Military Legitimacy" www.cambridge.org/core/journal.... This project started in 2018 Mosul, Iraq’s 2nd largest city, in the aftermath of a 9-month battle … 1/7
Grateful for the opportunity to write with @oonahathaway.bsky.social & @azmatzahra.bsky.social + work with @yalelawjournal.bsky.social on "The Dangerous Rise of 'Dual-Use' Objects in War": www.yalelawjournal.org/article/the-.... More on data & methods here: dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtm...
It's out!
The Dangerous Rise of "Dual-Use" Objects in War
Coauthored with @mararevkin.bsky.social and @azmatzahra.bsky.social.
We show that the targeting of dual-use objects over the last several decades has placed civilians at great risk.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
We also have some great dynamic data visualizations (with links to the full dataset on Dataverse)!
Check them out here:
dualuse.law.yale.edu
If you're starting law school this fall, you might be interested in my short essay, "How to Read a Legal Opinion: A Guide for New Law Students." You can download it for free here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Must-read special issue in Dædalus (open-access!) on research ethics in the Middle East & North Africa by an extraordinary group of scholars covering threats to academic freedom, the politics & economics of knowledge production, disinformation, AI & much more: direct.mit.edu/daed/article....
FYI: The Spencer Foundation, Kapor Foundation, The William T. Grant Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation have collaborated to offer $25K rapid response grants.
"This rapid response bridge funding opportunity is for scholars and teams whose grants have recently been cancelled by NSF."
Terrible news and a setback for research on police violence against civilians and the many students supported by @sabrinamkarim.bsky.social's NSF grant. Follow @gsslab.bsky.social for more about her important work with the Gender and Security Sector Lab: www.sabrinamkarim.com/gsslab