The Stonewall Monument is situated in the heart of Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan. The 7-acre site preserves the location of the 1969 Stonewall Riots, a pivotal moment in the LGBT rights movement and American history, when the NYPD raided the Stonewall Bar, a popular gay bar, setting off days of protesting that were violently suppressed by the police. In 2016, President Obama formally declared the area a National Monument. The next year, the site was the first National Monument to fly a rainbow flag. 

Days after taking office for his second term, President Trump issued Executive Order 14168, or Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. Among the consequences of Executive Order 14168, many of the references to LGBT identity were stripped from the Stonewall website. On February 9, 2026, the rainbow flag at Stonewall was also removed, a public and visible testament to the continual erasure of what the Administration has labeled “corrosive ideology.” 

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Last summer, I spent two weeks working with the  Herero community education group Hitambo Virtual Academy, to document oral histories of the 1904 Herero and Nama genocide and supporting teachers interested in genocide education. The trip served as the launching point of a multiyear project between our Center and partners in Namibia and Germany that will culminate in classroom resources for Namibian, German, and American teachers to better teach about the genocide.

For me, it was an opportunity to see firsthand how colonial violence is remembered in Namibia. This was not my first time learning about Germany’s colonial history. In 2022, I spent two weeks in Germany as part of a fellowship understanding cultures of remembrance in Germany and the United States. I reflected on that experience in an article I wrote when I returned, but my main takeaway was the difference in how  Germany memorializes the Holocaust versus the violence committed in its colonial territories. In many ways, this mirrors American approaches to memorialization; often minimizing its own role in perpetuating settler violence, especially in recent years. 

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(This post contains spoilers for Cabaret.)

Following a co-hosted symposium on the Weimar Republic, the Guthrie generously invited the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies to attend a performance of Cabaret. We went last weekend, and it was simply exceptional. If you stop reading here, or take nothing else away from this post, see the show!

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Act I. The play opens. “Wilkommen.” Soft chugging of a train as Cliff arrives in Berlin. 

Act I of Cabaret is everything a real cabaret should be: decadent, sultry, and dazzlingly hedonistic. It is a modernized—and more carnal—version of Lautrec’s famed portraits of gaudy nightlife, but recontextualized through the sort of Brechtian self-awareness made possible by good directing. However, this illusion of the perfect cabaret splinters at the end of the act, when the Emcee recoils in horror as their gramophone begins playing an eerie and increasingly disconcerting “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.” As an audience, we sense a change; we just don’t know what it is yet. 

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Last week, the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies had the honor of hosting a two-day workshop with 25 educators in partnership with Yahad–In Unum, an organization internationally recognized for its work uncovering forgotten sites of mass violence and amplifying survivor voices.

We were thrilled to see so many educators sign up, eager to learn and engage with challenging, timely material. The energy in the room was palpable, from the very beginning, participants asked thoughtful questions, shared insights, and leaned into the difficult but vital work of studying genocide and mass atrocity.

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Ottomania and the Armenian Genocide in World History Curriculum

June 2025

“Do high school students in the United States learn about the Armenian Genocide?” 

This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. K-12 education in the United States is highly decentralized and localized, with decisions about what is taught and learned made by districts, schools, or, most often, individual teachers at the classroom level. Some state-level surveys of genocide education have been conducted, but the variability of curricula among schools and the high rate of teacher turnover make it challenging to draw meaningful conclusions. While Holocaust education has become a mainstay of American curricula for decades, education about so-called “other genocides,” including the Armenian Genocide, is still much less common.

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Review for UM CHGS

May 6, 2025

As academic interest in settler colonialism has increased, so have innovative studies. In her most recent book, Settler Garrison: Debt Imperialism, Militarism, and Transpacific Imaginaries, Jodi Kim (Professor in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth) takes on the topics of military and transpacific history, imperial conquest and neoimperialism, and how US outposts paradoxically reproduce liberation and domination.  Although this, at first glance, seems a lot to consider in one work, Kim’s brilliant study deftly interrogates the development of U.S. military imperialism in the transpacific as inextricable from debt imperialism and the neoliberal world order.

Cover of Jodi Kim’s Settler Garrison. Debt, Imperialism, Militarism, and Transpacific Imaginaries 

(Duke University Press, 2022)

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A few months ago, I rode to church with an older woman from my congregation. We hardly knew each other, so I told her about the college courses I was taking, and she took an interest in “Sociology of Mass Violence.” After I explained the course and my current project on video games, she sat in silence for a moment. “How do video games relate to genocide?” she asked, expressing her belief that the rising popularity of shooter games makes players more violent. I tell her that violence within video games is more a product of humanity’s cruelty, instead of the other way around. Even the games I play—classified as “cozy games” by the community—display forms of violence that mirror those seen in my Sociology of Mass Violence course. Minecraft specifically utilizes a game mechanic to acquire resources, which has been exploited by the player base. The lack of responsibility for one’s actions against and treatment of the mobs in the game, in tandem with justifications players make for their behaviors, echoes back to concepts James Waller discusses regarding perpetrators. 

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When you grow up in Poland, you know when you know. Poland, a country that has endured centuries of Russian aggression — cultural, military and political. We were partitioned, occupied, Russified, and silenced. Our intellectuals were often imprisoned or executed, our histories rewritten. My family, like many others, lived under the oppressive, dishonest Soviet propaganda.

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Tomorrow, June 12, marks what would have been Anne Frank’s birthday, making this interview and the recent planting of the Anne Frank tree all the more meaningful and poignant.

In the photo, Interim Director Joe Eggers of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota stands with Natalie Flaherty and Aga Fine, a student assistant at the Center, beside the newly planted Anne Frank tree—a powerful symbol of remembrance and hope.

Interview conducted Monday, June 3, 2025

Two weeks ago, a living tribute to history and resilience was planted in Fairmont, Minnesota: an Anne Frank Tree. Behind this remarkable project is Natalie Flaherty, an 11-year-old student whose compassion and initiative have already left a lasting mark on her community.

Earlier this week, we had the honor of sitting down with Natalie to hear more about the inspiration behind her work, the story of how the tree came to be, and the lessons she hopes others will take from it.

Getting to Know Natalie

Q: Can you tell us a little about yourself?

Natalie: My name’s Natalie and I’m going into seventh grade. I’m 11 right now and I’ll be 12 in two months. I have a bracelet mission—my bracelets say “Put a Stop to Hate.” I really like to read and write in my journal.

The Spark Behind the Project

Q: How did the idea of planting an Anne Frank Tree come to you?

We saw that Nebraska was planting one, so we traveled down there. I got to be the keynote speaker at their event. As soon as we got back, we applied right away. We filled out the forms and now we have one here—and I’m so happy that we do.

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On March 27th, Doğukan Günaydin, a master’s student at the Carlson School of Business, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). While Doğukan’s detention is the result of a vague tightening of immigration enforcement, where his immigration status will ultimately be determined, the Fort Snelling Immigration Court, has been the epicenter of contentious deportations in Minnesota for more than a century and a half. 

Much of Doğukan’s arrest by ICE has been shrouded in secrecy; his name and even the rationale behind his arrest weren’t released until several days into his detainment. On April 8th, Doğukan finally appeared before a judge, appearing from the Sherbourne County Jail, one of five Minnesota counties to sign new agreements with ICE to perform certain functions related to immigration enforcement. Media outlets have suggested that Doğukan will appear before an immigration court on Friday, April 11th. 

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