NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Children are being used as soldiers in 40 percent
of the world‘s armies, says author Peter W. Singer, who speaks at
Vanderbilt University on Thursday, March 17.
Singer, author of Children at War (Pantheon, 2005), will speak at 4:10 p.m. in the Moore Room of Vanderbilt Law School.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by
Vanderbilt‘s Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities and the
Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies. A reception and book
signing will follow the lecture. Children of War will be available for
purchase.
Singer reveals in Children of War that as many as 300,000 children
are presently serving as combatants around the world. The lecture will
examine this development and its ramifications.
“Peter W. Singer forces us to confront this problem head on, shows
how children are dehumanized and turned into killers and how to deal
with the problem,” wrote Kati Marton, former chief advocate of the
United Nations Office of Children and Armed Conflict, about Children at
War. “We continue to ignore this crisis only at our peril.”
Singer, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, is an expert
on contemporary warfare, foreign policy, national security,
peacekeeping, terrorism and U.S. policy toward the Islamic world. He is
also the author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized
Military Industry (Cornell University Press, 2003).
Media contact: Jim Patterson, (615) 322-NEWS
Jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu