This article chronicles the roundtable held at LUISS University in Rome on 23 May 2025, marking the eightieth anniversary of the Italian Resistance. Organised alongside the launch of the special issue of Modern Italy titled ‘The Italian Resistance: Historical Junctures and New Perspectives’, the event gathered prominent scholars to revisit the legacy of the Resistance in contemporary historical, cultural and political discourse. Contributions highlighted emerging research on marginal actors, transnational perspectives, gendered memory and the symbolic dimensions of antifascism. Discussions revealed a shared concern with pluralising memory and resisting reductive narratives. This reflection emphasises the enduring relevance of the Resistance as a site of democratic imagination and critical historical inquiry, as well as the journal’s continued commitment to fostering innovative and inclusive scholarship on modern Italy.

This paper critiques the use of the term ‘evil’ in philosophical discussions of the problem of evil. We argue that what is commonly identified as ‘evil’ in this debate is better as ‘misfortune.’ The division between moral and natural evil equivocates between agentic and non-agentic ‘evil,’ undermining its coherence as a unifying concept. Evil events are necessarily caused by evildoers, which are non-existent in events of natural evil. By contrast, ‘misfortune’ places the focus on the victim regardless of the source, better capturing what philosophers intend with the prior term ‘evil.’ Our more precise definition of ‘evil’ satisfies Jean Nabert’s notion of evil as the unjustifiable while also being sufficiently distinct from badness. What distinguishes ‘evil’ from mere badness is moral erasure, which is the perception of other human beings as objects unworthy of moral consideration. While a bad person causes misfortunes as a trade-off in pursuit of a perceived good, an evil person is either completely indifferent to their victim’s misfortunes, or malicious by deliberately causing misfortunes for pleasure’s sake. Our distinction between ‘misfortune’ and ‘evil’ clarified as (im)moral, indifferent, or malicious challenges the assumption that evil, as traditionally framed, poses a direct contradiction to God’s existence.

Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, was crushed by Antarctic sea ice and sank in November 1915. Since then, it has been widely considered that Endurance was the strongest polar ship of its time and was lost because ice tore away the rudder. Based on expedition diaries, Shackleton’s correspondence, and structural analysis, this paper shows that Endurance was not among the strongest ships of its time and that the rudder was not the main cause of the vessel sinking. While the final reason was tearing off the keel, Endurance sank because the vessel was simply crushed in compression by ice. This is not surprising, Endurance was not designed for compressive conditions in the Antarctic pack ice, but for easier conditions at the ice edge in the Arctic. The weakest part of its hull was the engine room area, which was not only larger than in other early Antarctic ships but also lacked beams to give strength against compression by ice. Comparison with other wooden polar ships is not favourable for Endurance: ships designed for compressive pack ice were stronger. It is also evident from archive research that Shackleton was well aware of the weaknesses of Endurance even before his expedition set sail for Antarctica.

This paper examines trends in wage, income, and consumption inequality in Turkey from 2002 to 2023, a period marked by unorthodox economic policymaking before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Using microdata from the Turkish Statistical Institute’s Household Budget Survey and the Survey of Income and Living Conditions, we document several salient distributional patterns. Wage inequality declined steadily over two decades, including during the recent episode of policy experimentation – coinciding with sustained minimum wage hikes and a rising share of university-educated workers. Income inequality also fell, though less markedly, before reversing in recent years due to widening disparities in capital and entrepreneurial income. In addition, consumption inequality rose dramatically during the unorthodox policy period, exceeding income inequality growth and driven primarily by a surge in durable goods consumption among top-decile households. These findings reveal the complex and multi-dimensional distributional consequences of unconventional economic policy in emerging markets and highlight the importance of examining inequality across multiple dimensions when evaluating policy effectiveness.