“Time cautions us to prudence,” Glickman said. “But there are costs to the avoidance of conflict. We should realize what the costs are of leaving Saddam in possession of weapons of mass destruction and in possession of his country.”

And Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights and KSG Professor of the Practice of Human Rights Michael Ignatieff, a self-described “reluctant” supporter of war, said that waiting to enter Iraq would bring continued danger to Iraqi civilians instead of compliance from Saddam.

“The cost will be the lives and liberties of the Iraqi people,” Ignatieff said.

After each panelist spoke, the microphones were turned over to the audience.

Students and faculty from across the University lined up at the microphones to ask more questions and make more comments than time allowed. Audience members questioned everything from the timing to the motives to the ultimate utility of invading Iraq.

Students at the forum said that the panel provided a much-needed medium to hear and present views on the war.

“It was an extraordinary intellectual debate that filled a void,” Adam J. Scheuer ’06 said.

Others added, though, that the speakers did little to alleviate the confusion that many feel over war.

“I was talking to a friend and she said that it was kind of creepy here tonight, because she’d expected the speakers to have more information than we do,” said Jeffrey P. Amlin ’06. “But they don’t, they just have more arguments.”

—Staff writer Laura L. Krug can be reached at krug@fas.harvard.edu.