(Yale News) Last May, Stefan Simon, director of the University’s Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, spoke to WNPR about the destruction of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra at the hands of the Islamic State.
Calling the destruction “a war on identity,” Simon said the extremist group’s actions can be seen as a cultural cleansing — something modern researchers do not yet fully understand. During a Tuesday afternoon talk for the U.N. Global Colloquium of University Presidents, Jason Lyall, director of Yale’s Political Violence FieldLab, echoed that thought.
One of the earlier talks in the three-day colloquium, Lyall’s presentation discussed the role of antiquities in modern conflicts, highlighting how the destruction and looting of artifacts can become a strategy of war. […]
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