Untold war stories
When Abby Disney was writing her dissertation on war novels at Columbia, she noticed a curious pattern: Nearly all of them were about men, by men, and in most cases, for men. But it wasn’t until she traveled to Liberia, in the wake of the country’s 14-year-long civil war, that she realized just how often women’s voices are stifled in the stories we tell about how wars are fought — and perhaps more important, in how peace is won. Peaceful women protesters in Liberia had played a crucial role in bringing the conflict to an end and in unseating President Charles Taylor, but after their democratic victory they were “disappeared from the record,” she said. “It really occurred to me that this is what it looks like as you’re erased from a story,” Disney told a rapt audience Tuesday night at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). Throughout history and across cultures, women’s voices have been...