For the past six years, the world has watched in horror as Syria and Iraq have endured some of the worst human and heritage violence since World War II. In this presentation for UT Antiquities Action, Dr. Stephennie Mulder (Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin) will argue that the dominant universalist model of archaeological heritage preservation, wherein heritage is envisioned as a property-based model belonging “to all humankind,” has in fact been an important motivation for the destruction of heritage in wartime and in the alienation of local communities from their heritage following reconstruction. In contrast to the “universal” heritage model, a proposal for inclusive reconstruction offers the vision for a genuinely healing act of resistance and recovery for local communities.