The costs of war: Lessons from a public scholarship project on the post‐9/11 wars

Abstract

AbstractThis article lays out the work of Costs of War, a project of scholars creating public‐facing knowledge toward the goal of challenging US militarism. Emerging from literature that critiques US imperial violence and deconstructs the commonplace understandings that support it, our efforts identify and confront pillars of belief about war that are shaped by the powerful military‐industrial complex and rooted in an underlying devaluation of the lives of Muslims, people of color, women, and oppressed groups who bear the brunt of militarization both at home and abroad. We use our research and associated website (costsofwar.org) to reach out to journalists, editors, Congress, policymakers, civic groups, social movements, and the US public. In contesting the soundbites about the post‐9/11 wars that allow these wars to be seen as inevitable and to continue uncontested, we hope to help avert the next war championed by those least likely to live with the horrific and decades‐long consequences. We describe our approach, its successes, and its stumbling blocks in hope of offering insights for scholars in the social sciences who wish to use their research in service of activist goals and social justice movements, antiwar and beyond.