Marc LiVecche is the McDonald Distinguished Scholar of Ethics, War, and Public Life at Providence. He is also a non-resident research fellow at the US Naval War College, in the College of Leadership and Ethics.
Marc completed doctoral studies, earning distinction, at the University of Chicago, where he worked under the supervision of the political theorist and public intellectual Jean Bethke Elshtain, until her death in August, 2013. His first book, The Good Kill: Just War & Moral Injury, was published in 2021 by Oxford University Press. Another project, Responsibility and Restraint: James Turner Johnson and the Just War Tradition, co-edited with Eric Patterson, was published by Stone Tower Press in the fall of 2020. Currently, he is finalizing Moral Horror: A Just War Defense of Hiroshima. Before all this academic stuff, Marc spent twelve years doing a variety of things in Central Europe—ranging from helping build sport and recreational leagues in post-communist communities, to working at a Christian study and research center, to leading seminars on history and ethics onsite at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp in Poland. This latter experience allowed him to continue his undergraduate study of the Shoah; a process which rendered him entirely ill-suited for pacifism.
Marc lives in Annapolis, Maryland with his wife and children–and a marmota monax whistlepigging under the shed. He can be followed, or stalked, on twitter @mlivecche. Additional publications can be found at his Amazon author page.
Just War encompasses two overlapping but distinct forms of justice. Complex questions of desert accompany both, sometimes tragically.
Marc LiVeccheMay 6, 2023
The presence of certain kinds of evil in the world–including aggression against the innocent–signal the possibility that war must be.
Marc LiVeccheApril 29, 2023
Porter Halyburton’s extraordinary memoir of his POW experience is a testament to the power of choice and human liberty
Marc LiVeccheMarch 25, 2023
Providence editor Marc LiVecche, McDonald Scholar of Ethics, War, and Public Life, spoke with the Consul General of the Republic of…
Marc LiVeccheFebruary 23, 2023
There is no peacetime in the Maoist worldview. The Chinese spy balloon was one more means for Beijing to turn the strategic environment to its advantage.
Marc LiVeccheFebruary 8, 2023
The just war tradition offers a view of politics conceiving of sovereignty as a moral responsibility through the just causes of war can be met and overcome.
Marc LiVeccheJanuary 28, 2023
As should already be clear from this series’ first three essays (here, here, and here), the Christian realist just war…
Marc LiVeccheJanuary 16, 2023
Thomas Aquinas is a pivotal thinker — historically and conceptually — in the development of the Christian realist just war tradition
Marc LiVeccheDecember 22, 2022
The Christian realist just war tradition is primarily concerned with aiding reflection on how to meet the obligations of of love through, not despite, war
Marc LiVeccheDecember 15, 2022
The first in a series, this introductory essay grounds the historical development of just war tradition in Christian moral and political responsibility
Marc LiVeccheDecember 9, 2022