Dear Friends, 

In keeping with our commitment to scholarly excellence, I am pleased to 
announce that three Doctoral Fellows has joined our ranks for the period of 
three months (January-March). They will be associated with the Department 
of Political Science. They coming to Minnesota is made possible by the 
GOFDANS resources. They will be working mainly on issues related to 
humanitarianism. They are from the University of Tampere, Finland. I am 
sure that they will be eager to contribute to the University community 
generally and also to the Government of Finland/David and Nancy Speer 
–activities. What follows is a brief description of their backgrounds 
and research interests.

Yours,

Mika Aaltola


Saara Särmä, M.Soc.Sc., is a researcher and doctoral student at the 
Deparment of Political Science and International Relations, University of 
Tampere, Finland. The working title of her doctoral dissertation is 
"Masculinist International Relations - Feminist Readings on Nuclear 
Proliferation". Her research interests include feminist theory, 
masculinity, nuclear proliferation, world order, US foreign policy, 
humanitarianism, and critical security studies. She has taught courses on 
feminist IR and academic writing.

http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/politiikka/staff/sarma.html

Juha Käpylä, M.Soc.Sc., is a researcher and doctoral student at the 
Deparment of Political Science and International Relations, University of 
Tampere, Finland. Käpylä’s Ph.D. dissertation “International 
Traumas and Dead Metaphors – Development of the Concept of Human 
Rights after Traumatic International Upheavals since World War II - an 
American Perspective” will analyze the historical development of the 
concept of "human rights" in the 20th and early 21st century especially via 
three specific "international traumas" - namely the Second World War, the 
Vietnam War and the terrorist acts of September 11. 2001. The analysis will 
be limited to examine the political debates of US political elite 
concerning "human rights" during and right after these three international 
events. Käpylä's main, pragmatist assumption is that language within which 
all concepts, including the political concept of “human 
rights”, reside is ever evolving, and moreover that one possible 
mechanism for this change are massive, sometimes even international 
traumatic experiences in our living world - such as genocides, large acts 
of armed violence, acts of terror or collapses of political systems or 
world orders - which force us to re-examine the current linguistic and 
moral vocabularies we have. These traumatic events cause can cause what 
Foucault calls “ruptures” in our normal language at hand - they 
can create moments which help us see the poverty of our current language in 
explaining and justifying our moral and political world view. But, as 
Foucault argues, a “rupture” in a current language game does 
not mean absolute change in our beliefs, but a redistribution of them, kind 
of a reconfiguration of its elements. It is just these ruptures and their 
effects to the political evolution of the concept of “human 
rights” that Käpylä aims to analyze.

Harri Mikkola, M.Soc.Sc, is a researcher and doctoral student at the 
Deparment of Political Science and International Relations, University of 
Tampere, Finland. His Ph.D. dissertation "Between Contingency and 
Self-Overcoming - The Idea of Human Freedom in the American Pragmatist 
Tradition” will analyze one of the key concepts of humanitarianism - 
the concept of “freedom”. Mikkola’s analysis will focus 
on the question how the American pragmatist tradition has seen the limits 
and possibilities of human freedom, and the role the pragmatist tradition 
has given to spatio-temporal, necessarily political powers in defining the 
real essence of human freedom. Although many scholars acknowledge that even 
the most defining concepts of American liberal humanitarianism are 
offsprings of their time, and that using any given concept has political 
consequences, many still see “freedom” as a philosophically 
essential, politically universal and unproblematic concept in defining the 
moral legitimacy of our political decisions and actions. By doing this, 
they remove themselves from overt political engagement that all concepts 
must necessarily have. Mikkola’s critical pragmatist examination 
tries to re-assess these assumptions. For Mikkola also the concept of 
“human freedom” is under continuous conceptual evolution and 
socio-political debate, and what Foucault called “spheres of 
power” - webs of political power relations of social forces which 
extend to the whole social field - play the most important role in giving 
our concepts the meaning they have. It is problematic that while nurturing 
the idea of “humanitarianism” many actors have had “an 
oblivion of power”; they have not seen clearly enough the 
significance of the certain political powers and background assumptions 
that define the concept of “humanitarianism”. In 
Mikkola’s view it is essential to thoroughly study academic 
pragmatist tradition due to (1) its enormous effect on the understanding of 
the concept of “freedom” as understood by American policy 
makers today, (2) due to its significance to the evolution of the concept 
of “human freedom” as a whole and (3) due to it’s 
promising theoretical emphasis on power and human praxis in conceptual 
evolution.