Nathan Abrams, a professor in film at Bangor University, who has written extensively about Kubrick, says that "he used war as the backdrop to examine the bigger issues that he was interested in, like the nature of humanity, men, masculinity and evil. He's not interested in war, per se. He's interested in what war tells us about us." Peter Kuznick, a professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at the American University in Washington, DC, believes that "Kubrick understood, on a very deep level, the insanity of modern warfare."