From the 9/11 attacks in 2001 in the United States to the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris in 2015, international terrorism shocks public opinion and has profound political, military and economic consequences. However, dealing with the terrorist threat is challenging both technically and morally. Not only does counter-terrorism involve numerous institutions and tactics, but it also puts the core values of democratic society to test.
Philosophy Professor Seumas Miller has done a lot of research in this field. With his ERC grant worth 2.5 million euros, he will examine key practical and ethical issues of counter-terrorism in innovative approach: on the interface of philosophy and security studies. He and his team will seek answers to several crucial questions. What is international terrorism? What is our collective moral responsibility in the context of counter terrorism? How effective and moral are targeted killings, mass personal data collection and other tactics? His main research question is what a morally permissible and efficacious structure of counter-terrorist institutions and tactics in a contemporary liberal democracy should be.
With his research ‘Global Terrorism and Collective Moral Responsibility: Redesigning Military, Police and Intelligence Institutions in Liberal Democracies’, Miller joins ERC Advanced Grant winners of 2015 Prof. Cees Dekker and Prof. Serge Hoogendoorn.
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