Kateri Carmola has been on the faculty since 2001. She received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1999, where she also held a two year post-doctoral fellowship. Her courses span ancient and modern political theory, and the legal and ethical issues of modern warfare. Her new book, Private Security Contractors in the Age of New Wars: Risk, Law, & Ethics (Routledge), was published in February 2010. It analyzes the legal, ethical, and sociological issues surrounding the use of private military contractors worldwide. She has written on the problems of assigning blame for the crimes at Abu Ghraib, the concept of proportionality in the laws of war, and the use of Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan. Her work on Plato and the noble lie was published by Political Theory in 2003.

She has participated in numerous forums and events on the private security industry, including events hosted by the American Bar Association, the Princeton Project on National Security, and Harvard University Law School. In September 2008 she provided expert testimony for the UN Working Group on Mercenaries, and in January 2010 she appeared, along with Jeremy Scahill, on NPR's "On Point" about Blackwater. She has lectured to military officers from around the world at the Marshall Center in Germany and National Defense University in Washington, DC.

She did her undergraduate work at the University of Chicago, and comes originally from St. Albans, Vermont.

Curriculum Vitae

Kateri Carmola Curriculum Vitae

Books Published

Private Security Contractors in the Age of New Wars: Risk, Law & Ethics, Routledge Press, February 2010

Published Articles

"It's All Contracts Now: Private Military Firms and the Clash of Legal Cultures", Brown Journal of World Affairs, November 2006

"The Concept of Proportionality: Old Questions and New Ambiguities" Book chapter in Just War Theory Revisited, Mark Evans, ed., University of Edinburgh Press, November 2004

"Outsourcing Combat: Force Protection and the Externalization of War Crimes", International Journal of Politics and Ethics, February 2003

"Noble Lying: Justice and Intergenerational Tension in Plato's Republic", Political Theory, Vol. 31, No. 1, February 2003

Research Interests

Ancient Political Philosophy
Modern and Post-Modern Political Thought
Machiavelli
Politics and Literature
Ethics and War
Ethics and Politics