Meet Austin Dillon

by Austin Dillon

I’m thrilled to be working with the Peace Economy Project.  I’ve always been passionate about national defense and human rights, two causes that have been close to my heart, even as a kid.  I can remember living in the UK and listening to BBC reports on cluster mines during the first Gulf War, asking my mom why wars hurt so many innocent people.  I was five years old and I don’t think I was satisfied with her answer, because I’ve been looking for one ever since.  After finishing high school in Texas I decided to go across the country and study government at Dartmouth College, where I dove head first into the history of war, women’s rights, and domestic and international politics.  I thought surely if I read enough books and submerged myself in political theory, I would find a reason for the pointless casualties of war.  My sophomore year I interned on the Hill, working for Henry Waxman’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform as a speechwriter and researcher.  The next year I went back to D.C. to work at the Brookings Institute as a research assistant for Tom Mann and Steve Hess.  All four years, whether I was writing a paper for class or interviewing subjects for an internship, my original question, the animus to my search, loomed in the back of mind.  Inevitably, it seems, I was drawn to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a shinning example of innocents in the grip of war.  My senior thesis explored the impact of Israeli settlements on the peace process and more specifically the influence they wield within the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).  Last fall I graduated and I have to say that after studying the theories (realism, institutionalism, prisoner’s dilemma, constructivism, etc.), participating in the policy machine and the think-tanks that critique them, and researching the actual cases I have no answer for my five year old self.  There is no reason for the casualties of war and I hope to make that clear during my time at PEP.