This interdisciplinary symposium explores a crucial but little-studied issue with growing importance today: what is the value of harm suffered by victims, whether of terrorism, crime or natural disasters. In law, politics, economics and public opinion, answers differ widely, and unequal treatment is the norm. Across the globe, victims evoke a range of feelings, from compassion verging on celebrations of heroism, to denial, anger, indifference and even repulsion. Those reactions translate into wide variations in legal and economic responses to their harm.
The symposium will bring together experts to compare perspectives from the United States and France. They will be joined by professors of law, economics, history and philosophy. It will be held in English at the Maison Française at Columbia University in New York and is part of the Matrice Memory Program, an international transdiscilplinary research program supported by the Government of France (« Plan d'Investissements d’avenir »), and specifically a section of this program dedicated to memory of 11/13 terrorist attacks in Paris (memoire13novembre.fr). The symposium is co-sponsored by the University Paris-1 Panthéon Sorbonne, CNRS, Maison Française, and Columbia Center for Contemporrary Critical Thought.
The speakers include prominent experts from the United States and France, including two prominent public officials, François MOLINS, Attorney General at the French Court of Cassation (Supreme Court) and Cyrus VANCE Jr., District Attorney for New York County. They will be joined by professors of law, economics, history and philosophy.
