NYU Abu Dhabi's latest public talk featured Yale polisci professor Stathis Kalyvas presenting a history and academic analysis of domestic conflict (he prefers not to call it "civil war"). The talk was very broad, from the reasons for the recent 1.5 decades of intensified interest in domestic conflict to the various perspectives regarding triggers and motivation. He also presented some useful primer points on the topic, such as categorization of domestic conflicts based on tactics used by the factions, and presented a still broad but extensive summary matrix of the four major periods of modern domestic conflicts against common defining characteristics of ideology, trans-national movements, and such. A good talk, with much to discuss during the Q&A.
