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.” 

What is “corrosive ideology”? In March 2025, Executive Order 14253, or Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, was signed by President Trump. It described “corrosive ideology” as any “descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.”

Executive Order 14253 has given the Department of the Interior the ability to functionally censor plaques, signs, and sites across the country, in most cases minimizing or even erasing the contributions of many historically marginalized groups. In his book Erasing History, Jason Stanley points to the revision of the historical record as a hallmark of an authoritarian regime, as it strengthens state power by disconnecting citizens from understanding the historic struggle for rights. 

In the year since Trump issued his executive orders, several groups have filed lawsuits against the changes. Still others are working tirelessly to preserve these signs into the future. One of these projects, Save Our Signs, is based here at the University of Minnesota. I talked with one of the project leads, Jenny McBurney, about the project and its aims. 

Why is preserving these signs so important?

The National Park Service (NPS) has been called “America’s largest classroom,” and its purpose is to preserve historic and geographically important locations for the education and enjoyment of the American public.  Educational signs, interpretive panels, and exhibits at National Park sites help to tell visitors the story of that place and why it is important to our shared history.  These signs are often the result of years of dedicated work by park rangers, community members, and historians.  Plus, they are paid for by our tax dollars – this information should stay in the public’s hands.  National Park signs aren’t necessarily perfect, and it’s normal to update their content over time as we learn about the history and science behind particular sites.  But this work should be done at individual parks by experts and community members working in collaboration, not as an ideologically-driven federal mandate to scrub uncomfortable truths from our history across the board.  This is why Save Our Signs is asking the public to visit National Parks, take photos of any signs they see, and submit them to our project at SaveOurSigns.org.  Together, we can preserve a snapshot of what the parks look like today, and help us track ongoing removals in our parks. 

What has been the response to Save Our Signs? 

We have had such an overwhelmingly positive response!  It’s been really wonderful.  We have received over 13,000 photos across over 400 NPS sites so far, and we are continuing to collect photographs.  We have also heard from people all over the country that they appreciate this work, and that they want to help to preserve our history and scientific knowledge for future generations.  One of the bright spots in all of this has been getting to connect with and learn from people from all walks of life.  It’s clear that so many people care deeply about our National Parks.

What are some of the trends you’ve seen in removed signs? Are there some themes that are more common than others?

The main targets so far have been content relating to slavery, Indigenous people, and climate change.  

One of the biggest sites of censorship has been at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia.  The President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation is an open-air exhibit in that park that sits at the location of the presidential mansion that Presidents Washington and Adams lived in between 1790 to 1800, while Washington DC was not yet built.  The President’s House exhibit tells the stories of the nine people who were enslaved by George Washington and worked in that house.  The site was created in 2010 after advocacy from local activists.  The site is a powerful and moving exhibit that forces visitors to confront the dissonance of slavery and freedom during the founding era of this country.  But on January 22, 2026, every interpretive panel at the President’s House site was removed.  Local activists stepped up and filed a lawsuit, and a few of the panels have since been restored, but the future of the site is still uncertain.  

Beyond the President’s House, other signs and displays about slavery have been removed from the Virgin Islands National Park, while others describing historical injustices and harms against Indigenous people have been removed from Grand Canyon National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and Muir Woods National Monument.

Additionally, signs and exhibits about climate change have been removed from Muir Woods National Monument, Acadia National Park in Maine, Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park, Glacier National Park, and Gateway National Recreation Area in New York City.

Other content relating to Japanese internment camps, Civil Rights Era events, and other topics has been ordered to be removed from more parks.  We have a comprehensive removal tracker available at https://z.umn.edu/removedNPSsigns.

Have you noticed many in Minnesota?

We are not aware of any signs that have been removed at NPS sites in Minnesota.  

You’re probably still very much in the collecting phase, but have you thought about the long-term use of the collection? 

Yes! All photos that have been submitted to the Save Our Signs Archive, or SOS Archive, are in the public domain.  We include this question as part of the submission process because it was really important to us that these photos would be publicly available and free to reuse by anyone.  This information is supposed to be for the people, so these photographs are a way to help keep this information public.  We hope that people will take these photos and reuse them in creative ways, maybe for an art project or a local effort to share the story of a particular NPS site.   

On our end, we continue to collect photos, and our work is not yet done.  We are currently working on an updated database on the backend, which will enable us to publish photos much more quickly after volunteers submit them.  We hope to have that new process up and running soon.

One of the really interesting parts of the project is its grassroots approach to collection. How can people contribute to it? 

This project would not be possible without volunteers from all over the country who visit the parks, or look at their vacation photos, and find photos to submit to the SOS Archive.  We are so incredibly grateful for every person helping to preserve our history and scientific knowledge!

We are currently looking for three types of photos. First, we still need more photos of signs at NPS sites.  On our website, we have a map and a spreadsheet that show where we still need photos and how many we already have.  We hope that folks will visit the NPS sites where we only have a few photos, or no photos at all, and help make sure that we have photographs of every single sign, no matter the topic.  We’ve even seen videos posted online of people using the SOS Archive on their phones while they walk around a park to see if we are missing any signs, and then taking photos for us to add to the collection.   

Second, we are now also asking for people to submit photos of censored signs.  This might be a blank space where a sign used to be, or a picture of a sign that has been altered in some way to comply with Executive Order 14253.  We want to be able to show the public before-and-after photos of censored signs.

Third, we also invite submissions of creative resistance, such as art that is a clear act of protest at an NPS site.  For example, at the President’s House site, when the panels were removed, the community taped up paper signs saying things like “History was real” and “Tell the truth” on top of the blank spaces where the panels had been.  We believe that this type of community pushback is an important part of the story of this effort to censor our National Parks.  

We’re both in Minneapolis and living through a time that’s been scary for many Minnesotans, many of whom have taken to creating public art that speaks to the fear, anger, and anxiety many people are facing. Is that something you’ve considered adding to the collection? 

We have had discussions about how this crowdsourcing model could be reused and modified to collect public art in Minnesota.  But we’re just a small team with limited capacity.  We encourage anyone else who is interested in taking on a project like this to do so.  We already have one sister project – the Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian (https://www.citizenhistorians.org/).  They are a wonderful group of folks who documented all the exhibits at the Smithsonian museums with photographs in a similar project.  We talked with them while they were getting their project off the ground, and have continued to support each other since then, such as through advertising each other’s projects on our respective websites.  We welcome and encourage other sister projects, and we would be happy to consult with you to get you started!

More broadly, how has being in Minnesota shaped this work?

Living in Minnesota during this federal occupation has impacted our work with Save Our Signs in direct and indirect ways.  The majority of our team is based here in the Twin Cities.  At a minimum, the federal occupation and horrific murders and abductions have made it incredibly hard to just function on a day-to-day basis.  Especially in early January, right after Renee Good was killed by ICE agents, many of us felt overwhelmed and scared.  Our children’s daycares and schools were closed, and businesses across the cities were shuttered.  It was hard to focus on anything, let alone the SOS project.  But indirectly as well, it can be hard to remember why this work is important.  What does it matter if a sign at a National Park is removed when our neighbors are dying and disappearing?  

Then, throughout January and February, we saw more signs and displays removed from National Parks around the country.  The focus on censoring uncomfortable truths about slavery, in particular, was highlighted by the removals at the President’s House on January 22.  Two days later, Alex Pretti was killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis, and we were told by the federal government not to believe the truth we saw with our own eyes.  More educational signs at National Parks across the country continued to be removed into February.  These events are not directly related, but they have a thread in common: the suppression of documentation and an effort by the federal government to control the narrative, no matter the cost. 

At National Parks, the current administration is attempting to erase documentation of past injustices and atrocities.  At the same time, in our city streets, the administration is trying to stop people from recording evidence of current injustices and atrocities happening each day to our immigrant friends, family members, and neighbors.  

So, even when it feels hard, our team has decided to continue our work as best we can, with a renewed sense of purpose.  We will continue to collect photographs to preserve our National Park signs and make them accessible to the public.  We will also collect photographs of the people’s resistance to censorship in our National Parks, as well as evidence of the blank spaces where signs used to stand.  And we will track these removals publicly, and share what we know, to ensure that this censorship is not allowed to happen in the dark.  Instead, this censorship must happen in broad daylight, so we can all judge it and start our own conversations with our neighbors: whose history should be told, and how?

Joe Eggers is the Interim Director of CHGS

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. 

While I got a sense of this dichotomy in Germany, it was magnified in Namibia. The number of memorials to German soldiers dwarfs the number of sites remembering Herero or Nama victims. From Windhoek to Swakopmund to even Etosha National Park, Namibia is littered with sites that celebrate the heroism of German colonial forces. Namibia’s numerous memorial sites closely align with sites in Germany, extolling the bravery of colonial officials while using coded language that minimizes the suffering of Namibia’s Black population. 

A particularly jarring site was in Omararu. Omararu was a trading village founded in the 1860s by a clan of Herero. A decade later, Germany established a missionary in the community. In 1904, it was the site of an early battle during the Herero War of Independence, an event that coincides with the genocide itself. Omararu’s memorial, Franke Tower, remembers the German relief forces who rescued the garrisoned troops in the village. The tower’s namesake, Victor Franke, was famous for his campaigns against Indigenous Namibians and reportedly committed tremendous human rights abuses, many of which we would consider genocidal today. Despite this, the tower is well-maintained and the plaque itself has clearly been recently replaced, pointing to a continued reverence to colonial history. At this same time, there is virtually no memorialization to Herero victims of the genocide. The tower is one of several examples of the complicated history of contested memory in Namibia. 

The Reiterdenkmal, or Equestrian Statue, is one of the most prominent German colonial memorials. Erected in 1912, the statue of a German equestrian soldier stood for more than a century in the capitol, Windhoek. It celebrated the German empire’s power and dominance in the region. Until it was dismantled in 2013, the statue stood in a central part of Windhoek, in front of the Alte Fest, a former German military base and museum, near the Christuskirche, one of Windhoek’s most popular tourist sites. Christuskirche and Alte Fest, coupled with the Reiterdenkmal were a clear demonstration of colonial power, well after Germany lost its Southwest African colony in 1915. 

This continuation of German authority in Namibia points to a larger challenge Namibia continues to face. Despite losing control over what is now Namibia, German-Namibians still play an outsized role in Namibia. Less than two percent of the Namibian population are white, and even smaller number connect with German lineage. Yet the overwhelming majority of Namibia’s farmland is controlled by German-Namibians, giving them a significant economic advantage over Black Namibians. In White dominant communities, German language and heritage are commonplace. In Swakopmund, one of the largest communities of German-Namibians, and itself the site of one of the genocide’s concentration camps, several buildings incorporate German names. Several Bismarck buildings can be found in Swakopmund, in what seems like a cruel reinforcement of the genocide. 

While I was in Swakopmund, there was news about an order for the Bismarck Medical Center to remove its sign depicting Bismarck himself. The campaign was organized by Laidlow Peringand, a local activist who has been challenging German colonial memory in Namibia. Shortly before my visit, Laidlaw had covered a memorial to German marines with red paint, a tactic he has repeatedly used, and one that echoes activist approaches to draw attention to controversial memorials around the world, including Minnesota. Laidlaw also operates the country’s only museum dedicated to the genocide. He was active in the documentation and memorialization of mass graves on the outskirts of Swakopmund, and the creation of a memorial to its victims. Laidlaw’s activism is the embodiment of a wider effort to create memorials that push back against settler narratives, and recenter the focus of the genocide on victims. 

Much of Namibia’s history is a painful one, marred by colonialism and violence and their associated legacies. Memorials that reinforce colonial histories reinforce these painful aspects of the past. There is reason for hope, though. The work of Hitambo Virtual Academy, Laidlaw, and others point to a new generation of Namibians challenging colonial narratives and directly confronting the past. The work of these groups could be a model for reclaiming memory in a post-colonial country.  

Note: The Center’s work in Namibia will continue, including a summer 2026 trip to continue its work with Herero and Nama communities, including groups in western Namibia. The Center recently received a Human Rights Initiative grant for this work through 2026. 

Joe Eggers is the Interim Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

(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!

—

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. 

Sounds of a train, growing louder, intermingle with the ghoulish lilt of the gramophone. 

Director Joseph Haj reinforces the thematic division between Acts I and II by moving the intermission from its usual placement* amid the darker part of the show forward, to follow immediately after “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.” This change punctuated the final moment of Act I and intensified the descent into darkness that defines the rest of the show.

Before this moment, the audience is given no hint of what is to come. As Cliff states at the very end of the show, “It was the end of the world, and I was dancing with Sally Bowles, and we were both asleep.” So too is the audience: asleep. Blissfully, and deliberately unaware of what lies ahead. In this asleep-ness, the audience becomes complicit in the events that follow. It is Haj’s intentional and unflinching focus on this complicity that makes his production of Cabaret such a powerful portrayal of the years preceding World War II and the Holocaust.

Act II. The train whistle grows louder. All eeriness from the end of Act I is gone, replaced by an almost mechanical normality. 

Guests gather for Fraulein Schneider’s (gentile) and Herr Schultz’s (Jewish) engagement party. One of the guests removes his coat to reveal a swastika armband (at this point, there was an audible collective gasp from the audience; in theater, as in “real” life, we can lull ourselves into believing that somehow the story ends differently this time). As the party guests grow uneasy, he begins to leave, but a woman persuades him to stay and begins singing a passionate rendition of a nationalist folk song (“Tomorrow Belongs to Me” (reprise)). The other guests join in, one by one, leaving the hosts, along with Cliff and Sally, stunned to discover what their neighbors believe–or, at least, the individuals and ideologies they follow without question. 

A new scene. The train is careening toward us now. The Emcee, dressed in leather and buckles, dons two glittering swastika armbands. The Kit Kat Klub dancers join and form a kick line– a grotesque spectacle that mocks the absurdity of Hitler and the Nazi party. (Unlike The Producers, I find Cabaret to be uniquely equipped to grapple with something deeper: the true tragedy and human cost of fascist ideology and hate.)

The ability to relay this ridiculousness without making light of the subject depends on a capacity to convey tragedy, making it essential that the production communicate the true devastation of the Holocaust. The final scene did so brutally, beautifully, and without compromise.

The Emcee’s role in Cabaret’s messaging is immense. In the original 1966 Broadway production, Joel Grey’s Emcee “represented the city of Berlin itself, their malevolence most obvious in the dark conclusion” (Blum 2024). However, the 1993 London and 1998 Broadway revivals shifted away from portraying the Emcee as a perpetrator.** While there have been many interpretations of the Emcee since, this production returned to portraying the Emcee as a victim. Part of the production’s emotional power lies in Haj’s decision to reclaim this version of the Emcee– one that underscores the tragedy and loss at the heart of the story.

In the final scene, the Emcee drops their train conductor’s coat and removes a wig to reveal cropped hair and a striped prisoner’s uniform—the kind worn in concentration camps. They bear a striking resemblance to the famous photographs of Czesława Kwoka, a fourteen-year-old Polish girl murdered at Auschwitz. Still performing a cabaret song, the Emcee grows more frenzied by the minute. The lights go dark. When they come up, everything else has vanished: the performers, the band, the props– even the lights themselves. The dim, sparkling glow of the cabaret has been replaced by a stark white light. It is cold and clinical. The illusion has lifted, replaced by the brutal clarity of reality. Was any of it real? Or was the entire performance imagined– an invention of the Emcee’s mind as they performed for fellow prisoners in the camp? Maybe it doesn’t matter.

Part of the set transforms into train cars. The cast returns, clutching small suitcases, and silently takes their places inside. The doors slam shut with a terrible finality. Blinding white lights shine through the cars and flood the audience. Lights out. The train leaves the station.

The lights come back up for bows, and the accompanying jaunty cabaret music is grating. It is harsh after the vulnerability and violence of the previous scene. The message is loud and clear. As Joseph Haj stated in one interview: “Cabaret reflects a society that is determined to dance as fast as it can, to keep the lights twirling as long as possible, to turn the volume up as loud as possible, to keep from seeing the train that is thundering toward them.”

–

*For theatre nerds, this was between “Tomorrow Belongs to Me (Reprise)” and “Kick Line.”

**As many people know, the lines between perpetrator/victim/bystander are often blurry, and at times, nonexistent– but this is not the focus of Cabaret. 

Sources:

Gillian Blum, “Cabaret 2024 Musical Ending Explained”, The Direct, June 29, 2024.

URL: https://thedirect.com/article/cabaret-2024-musical-ending-explained

Kyra Layman is a recent graduate of Macalester College and is excited to be working with CHGS this summer. She believes that Holocaust and genocide education is more important now than ever and is honored to be assisting the Center in supporting educators and developing genocide education curriculum. Her areas of academic study primarily center on individual and collective resistance in mass atrocities, altruism amidst genocide, and the use of collective memory in transitional justice efforts. In addition to her academic work, she is active in the theatre world and weaves her interests together wherever possible. 

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.

It was especially meaningful to learn from Yahad–In Unum’s educators, whose field investigations and oral history work continue to expand our understanding of the Holocaust and of genocide more broadly. Yahad’s research began with documenting the Holocaust by bullets in Eastern Europe, and they are now applying these same investigative methods to other contexts, including crimes committed against the Maya people in Guatemala, the Yazidi in Iraq, and Ukrainians during the ongoing Russian invasion.

These cross-regional connections help deepen our understanding of patterns of violence, silence, and resistance. Yahad is also playing a leading role in developing educational materials based on these oral testimonies—resources that make it possible to bring these stories directly into our classrooms.

Workshops like this are essential not only for building knowledge, but for building community. They offer educators a chance to come together, reflect, and prepare to pass on these lessons in meaningful, thoughtful ways. We are incredibly grateful to Yahad–In Unum for sharing their expertise and for the powerful work they continue to do around the world.

We look forward to future collaborations—and to bringing these stories and tools to the next generation of learners.

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.

A colleague reminded me that high school teachers cannot reasonably be expected to know everything. “It’s not that I’m purposefully not teaching it. I was never taught about the Armenian Genocide, and so I don’t include it in my class,” he said. A 2015 survey of American adults revealed that only 35 percent had any knowledge of the Armenian Genocide. However, compounding this lack of knowledge are two trends that have come to shape academic research and social awareness of the Armenian Genocide in the US: (a) Distortion and denial of the genocide and (b) Neo-Ottomanism and Ottoman nostalgia. These trends shape what American high school students learn in World History classes, especially Advanced Placement World History. 

Denial and Distortion

The Turkish and Azerbaijani governments, primary deniers and distorters of the Armenian Genocide, have long attempted to shape narratives of violence perpetrated against Armenians. While there are instances of outright denial of the genocide, narratives that distort or minimize the violence are more common, especially those that minimize the number of Armenians murdered in the genocide. The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote: “Turkey does not deny the suffering of Armenians, including the loss of many innocent lives, during the First World War. However, greater numbers of Turks died or were killed in the years leading to and during the War. Without belittling the tragic consequences for any group, Turkey objects to the one-sided presentation of this tragedy as a genocide by one group against another.” 

Another subtler tactic is the representation of the Ottoman Empire as one of tolerance and ethnic and religious diversity. The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote against narratives of violence and genocide, stating: “As a consequence, eight centuries of Turkish-Armenian relationship, which was predominantly about friendship, tolerance and peaceful coexistence, is forgotten.” This focus on tolerance and diversity, often minimizing or omitting any mention of ethnic or religious conflict or violence within the Ottoman Empire, is a form of Neo-Ottomanism and has been termed Ottoman Nostalgia. 

Ottoman Nostalgia

Neo-Ottomanism is a political ideology that seeks to promote Turkish political and economic influence over the former lands of the Ottoman Empire. Neo-Ottomanism often relies on Ottoman nostalgia, which promotes a narrative of the Ottoman Empire as diverse and tolerant of the various ethnic, religious, and cultural groups that once lived under its rule. While true to a degree – for example, the Ottoman Millet system granted non-Muslim Abrahamic religious communities, including Armenians, a degree of autonomy and self-rule – this narrative, especially when shared uncritically, minimized the ethnic and religious violence in the Ottoman Empire. These two trends – distortion and, especially, Ottoman nostalgia – can be clearly identified in US high school world history curricula. 

World History Curricula

Roger Back et al.’s World History Patterns of Interaction (first published in 1998) is one of the most popular high school-level world history textbooks in the United States. In fact, if you took a world history course in the US in the last 30 years, there is a good chance you encountered this text. The current (2010) edition only mentions the Armenian Genocide (referring to it as the “Armenian Massacre” in a call-out box in the margins of the chapter on World War I. The three-sentence-long text box also states that “more than 600,000 died of starvation or were killed,” when many academics put the number of deaths between 1 and 1.5 million. 

Roger Beck et al.’s World History: Pattern of Interaction Textbook

While texts like Beck et al.’s minimize the Armenian Genocide, Ottoman Nostalgia can be clearly seen in the formal and informal Advanced Placement World History curricula. 

Advanced Placement World History

While there is no national curriculum in the United States, there are curricula that are used across the country, such as Advanced Placement (AP) courses. AP courses, created by the College Board, a division of the Educational Testing Service, are meant to be college-level courses taught by high school teachers. Students may earn college credit based on their score on a comprehensive end-of-course exam. In 2024, 11 percent of all American high school students took the AP World History: Modern exam. As much as 10 percent more may have enrolled in APWH courses but did not sit for the exam. Additionally, in many schools, APWH curriculum influences non-AP world history classes. 

Formal and informal APWH’s curriculum includes: (a) the “Course and Exam Description” (CED), which lists the skills and content that must be covered in the course; (b) AP-recommended textbooks and exam preparation guides, and (c) teacher-created resources. 

The CED includes teaching and learning about “Genocide, ethnic violence, or attempted destruction of specific populations,” including “Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during and after World War I,” as one of several illustrative examples. In contrast, the Ottoman Empire is mentioned 32 times in the document, and highlighted for its diversity and inclusiveness: “Many states, such as the Mughal and Ottoman empires, adopted practices to accommodate the ethnic and religious diversity of their subjects or utilize the economic, political, and military contributions of different ethnic or religious groups.”

Textbooks

Jerry Bentley et al.’s Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past, a textbook recommended for APWH students, includes “Armenian Massacres” in the glossary, while in the text, it offers credence to Turkish distortion and denialism, writing: “The Turkish government in particular rejects the label of genocide and claims the Armenian deaths resulted not from a state-sponsored plan of mass extermination but from communal warfare perpetrated by Christians and Muslims, disease, and famine.” 

Jerry Bentley et al.’s Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past passage on the Armenian genocide [sic] and glossary entry

Teacher-Created Materials and Professional Development

Perhaps most telling is a Facebook Group, “AP World History Teachers,” with nearly 9,000 members, in which educators share resources, professional development opportunities, and discuss topics related to the course. In a post, a teacher reflected: “I did a 3 week NEH seminar on the Ottomans in Turkey back in 2013. They really ARE all that.”

Many posts within the group highlight Ottoman nostalgia. One particular post for an upcoming teacher-facilitated professional development workshop stated: “Just a reminder that TONIGHT I’m offering another free workshop! It’s at 7PM ET/ 4PM PT, I’ll discuss how we teach an empire that started as a small medieval state around 1300 and lasted until 1922. I’ll focus on how we can help students understand the Ottoman Empire as a dynamic state that continually evolved and was an ethnically and religiously diverse state.”

APWH Facebook Group Post

A teacher-created presentation on the Ottoman Empire included a focus on Pax Ottomana, or a “More positive view of Ottoman rule/expansion,” as well as a slide on the “M&M’s” of the Ottoman Empire, including the millet system. While using a lighthearted shorthand for students is an effective tool, it reduces history to a few keywords and scrubs it clean of any nuance. 

APWH Teacher-Created Presentation Slide

Teacher-created materials reflect a wide range of influences, including personal reading and professional development. However, given the teach-to-the-test nature of APWH, many materials follow the narrative of the CED and minimize the Armenian Genocide while highlighting Ottoman nostalgia. 

Conclusion

Highlighting narratives of diversity and tolerance while minimizing violent pasts is certainly not isolated to Turkish/Ottoman history. Indeed, such narratives would be very familiar to many American teachers who were often educated within a system that promoted similar narratives about the United States. Reducing history into a nice narrative or a marketable product ultimately does the students learning about it a disservice. Likewise, Ottoman nostalgia is part of a larger liberal discourse of multiculturalism that subsumes and minimizes ethnic, religious, or racial violence by the state. 

However, Ottoman nostalgia may be more difficult for American educators, even critically-minded ones, to discern and challenge in their classrooms. In the post-9/11 era, many critical social studies educators sought to provide students with knowledge about Islam and narratives of Islamic states that countered those that framed all Muslims as terrorists. For many social studies educators, simply teaching about the Ottoman Empire, something they likely learned little about in their own education, is a critical stance. While highlighting for students the tolerance and religious and ethnic diversity of the Ottoman Empire does seemingly little harm, such framing is often part of a larger narrative that also minimizes or denies the Armenian Genocide.

George Dalbo is an Assistant Professor of Education and Youth Studies at Beloit College and a Research Fellow with the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. Previously, George was a middle and high school social studies teacher. 
Kipper Bromia is a student at Beloit College majoring in sociology with an interest in how social systems affect individual people and relationships that they have with each other. Kipper also has an interest in animal behavior and welfare, and the relationships that animals and ecosystems have with humans.

“They Really ARE All That”

Ottomania and the Armenian Genocide in World History Curriculum

By George Dalbo and Kipper Bromia

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.

A colleague reminded me that high school teachers cannot reasonably be expected to know everything. “It’s not that I’m purposefully not teaching it. I was never taught about the Armenian Genocide, and so I don’t include it in my class,” he said. A 2015 survey of American adults revealed that only 35 percent had any knowledge of the Armenian Genocide. However, compounding this lack of knowledge are two trends that have come to shape academic research and social awareness of the Armenian Genocide in the US: (a) Distortion and denial of the genocide and (b) Neo-Ottomanism and Ottoman nostalgia. These trends shape what American high school students learn in World History classes, especially Advanced Placement World History. 

Denial and Distortion

The Turkish and Azerbaijani governments, primary deniers and distorters of the Armenian Genocide, have long attempted to shape narratives of violence perpetrated against Armenians. While there are instances of outright denial of the genocide, narratives that distort or minimize the violence are more common, especially those that minimize the number of Armenians murdered in the genocide. The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote: “Turkey does not deny the suffering of Armenians, including the loss of many innocent lives, during the First World War. However, greater numbers of Turks died or were killed in the years leading to and during the War. Without belittling the tragic consequences for any group, Turkey objects to the one-sided presentation of this tragedy as a genocide by one group against another.” 

Another subtler tactic is the representation of the Ottoman Empire as one of tolerance and ethnic and religious diversity. The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote against narratives of violence and genocide, stating: “As a consequence, eight centuries of Turkish-Armenian relationship, which was predominantly about friendship, tolerance and peaceful coexistence, is forgotten.” This focus on tolerance and diversity, often minimizing or omitting any mention of ethnic or religious conflict or violence within the Ottoman Empire, is a form of Neo-Ottomanism and has been termed Ottoman Nostalgia. 

Ottoman Nostalgia

Neo-Ottomanism is a political ideology that seeks to promote Turkish political and economic influence over the former lands of the Ottoman Empire. Neo-Ottomanism often relies on Ottoman nostalgia, which promotes a narrative of the Ottoman Empire as diverse and tolerant of the various ethnic, religious, and cultural groups that once lived under its rule. While true to a degree – for example, the Ottoman Millet system granted non-Muslim Abrahamic religious communities, including Armenians, a degree of autonomy and self-rule – this narrative, especially when shared uncritically, minimized the ethnic and religious violence in the Ottoman Empire. These two trends – distortion and, especially, Ottoman nostalgia – can be clearly identified in US high school world history curricula. 

World History Curricula

Roger Back et al.’s World History Patterns of Interaction (first published in 1998) is one of the most popular high school-level world history textbooks in the United States. In fact, if you took a world history course in the US in the last 30 years, there is a good chance you encountered this text. The current (2010) edition only mentions the Armenian Genocide (referring to it as the “Armenian Massacre” in a call-out box in the margins of the chapter on World War I. The three-sentence-long text box also states that “more than 600,000 died of starvation or were killed,” when many academics put the number of deaths between 1 and 1.5 million. 

Roger Beck et al.’s World History: Pattern of Interaction Textbook

While texts like Beck et al.’s minimize the Armenian Genocide, Ottoman Nostalgia can be clearly seen in the formal and informal Advanced Placement World History curricula. 

Advanced Placement World History

While there is no national curriculum in the United States, there are curricula that are used across the country, such as Advanced Placement (AP) courses. AP courses, created by the College Board, a division of the Educational Testing Service, are meant to be college-level courses taught by high school teachers. Students may earn college credit based on their score on a comprehensive end-of-course exam. In 2024, 11 percent of all American high school students took the AP World History: Modern exam. As much as 10 percent more may have enrolled in APWH courses but did not sit for the exam. Additionally, in many schools, APWH curriculum influences non-AP world history classes. 

Formal and informal APWH’s curriculum includes: (a) the “Course and Exam Description” (CED), which lists the skills and content that must be covered in the course; (b) AP-recommended textbooks and exam preparation guides, and (c) teacher-created resources. 

The CED includes teaching and learning about “Genocide, ethnic violence, or attempted destruction of specific populations,” including “Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during and after World War I,” as one of several illustrative examples. In contrast, the Ottoman Empire is mentioned 32 times in the document, and highlighted for its diversity and inclusiveness: “Many states, such as the Mughal and Ottoman empires, adopted practices to accommodate the ethnic and religious diversity of their subjects or utilize the economic, political, and military contributions of different ethnic or religious groups.”

Textbooks

Jerry Bentley et al.’s Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past, a textbook recommended for APWH students, includes “Armenian Massacres” in the glossary, while in the text, it offers credence to Turkish distortion and denialism, writing: “The Turkish government in particular rejects the label of genocide and claims the Armenian deaths resulted not from a state-sponsored plan of mass extermination but from communal warfare perpetrated by Christians and Muslims, disease, and famine.” 

Jerry Bentley et al.’s Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past passage on the Armenian genocide [sic] and glossary entry

Teacher-Created Materials and Professional Development

Perhaps most telling is a Facebook Group, “AP World History Teachers,” with nearly 9,000 members, in which educators share resources, professional development opportunities, and discuss topics related to the course. In a post, a teacher reflected: “I did a 3 week NEH seminar on the Ottomans in Turkey back in 2013. They really ARE all that.”

Many posts within the group highlight Ottoman nostalgia. One particular post for an upcoming teacher-facilitated professional development workshop stated: “Just a reminder that TONIGHT I’m offering another free workshop! It’s at 7PM ET/ 4PM PT, I’ll discuss how we teach an empire that started as a small medieval state around 1300 and lasted until 1922. I’ll focus on how we can help students understand the Ottoman Empire as a dynamic state that continually evolved and was an ethnically and religiously diverse state.”

APWH Facebook Group Post

A teacher-created presentation on the Ottoman Empire included a focus on Pax Ottomana, or a “More positive view of Ottoman rule/expansion,” as well as a slide on the “M&M’s” of the Ottoman Empire, including the millet system. While using a lighthearted shorthand for students is an effective tool, it reduces history to a few keywords and scrubs it clean of any nuance. 

APWH Teacher-Created Presentation Slide

Teacher-created materials reflect a wide range of influences, including personal reading and professional development. However, given the teach-to-the-test nature of APWH, many materials follow the narrative of the CED and minimize the Armenian Genocide while highlighting Ottoman nostalgia. 

Conclusion

Highlighting narratives of diversity and tolerance while minimizing violent pasts is certainly not isolated to Turkish/Ottoman history. Indeed, such narratives would be very familiar to many American teachers who were often educated within a system that promoted similar narratives about the United States. Reducing history into a nice narrative or a marketable product ultimately does the students learning about it a disservice. Likewise, Ottoman nostalgia is part of a larger liberal discourse of multiculturalism that subsumes and minimizes ethnic, religious, or racial violence by the state. 

However, Ottoman nostalgia may be more difficult for American educators, even critically-minded ones, to discern and challenge in their classrooms. In the post-9/11 era, many critical social studies educators sought to provide students with knowledge about Islam and narratives of Islamic states that countered those that framed all Muslims as terrorists. For many social studies educators, simply teaching about the Ottoman Empire, something they likely learned little about in their own education, is a critical stance. While highlighting for students the tolerance and religious and ethnic diversity of the Ottoman Empire does seemingly little harm, such framing is often part of a larger narrative that also minimizes or denies the Armenian Genocide.

George Dalbo is an Assistant Professor of Education and Youth Studies at Beloit College and a Research Fellow with the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. Previously, George was a middle and high school social studies teacher. 
Kipper Bromia is a student at Beloit College majoring in sociology with an interest in how social systems affect individual people and relationships that they have with each other. Kipper also has an interest in animal behavior and welfare, and the relationships that animals and ecosystems have with humans.

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)

Kim’s book opens with a wonderful analysis of the Oscar-winning South Korean movie Parasite as paralleling her work’s central concerns. Though the film is often understood by American audiences as simply a black comedy concerning South Korea’s class dynamics, Kim promotes a deeper understanding of the film’s symbolism as a critique of U.S. debt imperialism in one transpacific nation, in which Seoul is revealed as “the capital city of what is effectively a militarized US neocolony” (p. 2).  Subsequent chapters of Settler Garrison analyze transpacific spacial and temporal exemptions in which US occupation denies a county’s full sovereignty without offering US federal jurisdiction and statehood, with US presence in a territory creating a dominating metapolitical authority supplanting local autonomy and subjugating indigenous peoples.

In territories across the pacific, the US is both liberator and coercer, as Kim observes in chapters concerning spacial and temporal exemptions such as the military base/camptown, the POW camp, and Guam. Importantly, these exemptions involve both spacial and temporal structures and processes. The abstract social institutions and concrete sites all connect through land seizure and subsequent US metapolitical authority across the pacific, territory that US policy has conceptualized as an “American lake.”  In such areas, Kim finds that the US creates rules for others that it, conveniently, does not apply to itself. The current world order is based on strategic holdings, which must be reproduced through both military and extra-military dominance.

Ongoing military occupation, legal domination, and debt assignment, though, require continual shoring up.  Neocolonialism requires obfuscating the fancy footwork required to normalize it, and Kim goes on to carefully analyze cultural productions that “defamiliarize and estrange this naturalization by linking the land seizures of US settler colonialism to those of military empire” (p. 21).  Subsequent chapters in Kim’s book analyze a wealth of creative, indigenously-rooted cultural texts that expose and critique such domination so as to imagine different, better futures. The range of Kim’s cultural studies of creative works includes documentaries, short stories, novels, poetry, and stage productions. In them, she finds critical assessments of the various forms that neocolonial domination takes, including forms such as sexual exploitation, psychological warfare, and forced migration. Her analysis of such texts and their interconnected affinities allows Kim to find hope beyond current conditions.

For those uninitiated in the academic jargon of settler colonialism, Settler Garrison is dense. Though only 188 pages of text (not including notes), the writing, especially in the Introduction, can require considerable unpacking.  Regularly referencing a rich and diverse range of scholarship, Kim aims for an academic audience. Lay readers should keep Google handy for the at times dizzying array of concepts. For those willing to commit, though, Settler Garrison provides a deep and interconnected understanding of the mechanisms underlying US hegemony in the transpacific.

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. 

Minecraft is a sandbox game that lets players do nearly anything they can imagine. The open world facilitates adventuring and exploring. The massive catalog of blocks enables creative and artistic builds. The “redstone” mechanics function as a miniature version of electricity and technology with which players experiment. The multi-player compatibility is the icing on the cake: you can partake in all of the above with friends and family. Minecraft’s popularity is obvious, from the (once) small indie game being purchased by Microsoft, its explosion into media and culture, to the latest blockbuster film. Minecraft is a household name—and for good reason. 

The game generates places called “villages.” These villages differ based on the environment you find them and the randomized code of the game itself. Villages have at least five structures. In these structures lie “workstations,” beds, and chests filled with loot. Workstations, structures, and beds all show players that villagers have a flourishing society. In these structures live the inhabitants, known as “villagers.” These villagers allow for trading with the player. Villagers hold different jobs: farmers, for example, trade potatoes for an emerald. The more you trade with these villagers, the more trades you unlock—until the villager hits the rank of “master.” Trading with villagers can be an arduous task, requiring patience, persistence, and access to resources. 

Based on this description alone, one can think of a few ways that players can utilize the mechanics to their advantage. The game expects players to steal from the villages. The game encourages players to take the resources from them. Players feel no reservations about stealing since the game provides no consequences. The current world my friends and I play on is a prime example: most of our beds come from a village which we pillaged. We justify our thievery by saying that the villagers don’t need them. In the game, if a certain percentage of players sleep through the night, the night is skipped. The villagers, then, do not need a bed. The code of Minecraft ties villagers to a certain bed. In order for villagers to have children, extra beds must be available. The lack of beds means the villagers no longer have that tie to the village and cannot repopulate the village. The village right by my friend’s house now lies abandoned. 

You may be asking: “What need have they for repopulating?” In Minecraft, hostile mobs will attack both players and villagers. Hostile mobs—such as zombies and skeletons—spawn in (if night is not skipped). My insistence on sleeping comes from a desire not to be harmed by these hostile mobs, since they can kill players. If one dies to a hostile mob, the player respawns, seeks out their items, and fends off the mobs. Villagers have only one life. When they die, they remain dead. Repopulation is necessary for the continued existence of the villagers. The empty village near my friend’s house serves as a reminder that people lived there before we arrived, before we colonized the surrounding areas. It haunts me. 

As mentioned above, villagers trade loot to players based on their jobs and experience. When I play the game, I tend to lock villagers in their homes for two reasons: (a) They cannot be harmed by hostile mobs if my fellow players do not sleep through the night, and (b) I have constant access to the villagers. I trade with them every day until I get what I want. I tend to “make up” for my offenses by providing extra beds to the village as a sort of quid pro quo “treaty”: if you give me good trades, your population will expand. Here’s another mechanic: if a zombified villager is cured of their zombification, the player receives a discount for all trades with that villager.

The worst example of exploitation of these villagers I have seen requires its own section. Two years ago, one of my roommates made a world with our friends. We logged on a week later to find that one of our friends had built a villager farm. This farm holds two villagers captive in a small space. They stand atop beds and receive food from machines. The villagers, detecting an extra bed nearby, have a child. A minecart picks this child up and holds them until they grow up. The cart takes the villagers past a zombie, infecting and “zombifying” them. The cart shuttles the zombified villager to a curing chamber. Out of the chamber comes a cured villager. The cart escorts the villager to their final resting place: a cage with a workstation. My other roommate said, “I feel like you learn a lot about a person based on how they treat villagers.” After that experience, I wholeheartedly agreed. 

My interest in the treatment of villagers grows each time I play the game. If people are inherently good, would every player want to treat these villagers with respect and compassion? Or, if people are inherently bad, would every player want to exploit these villagers to maximize efficiency and utility? Most people I know lie somewhere in the middle. The language surrounding villagers, however, largely remains derogatory. I hear a constant slew of insults thrown at the villagers for not “behaving”. Players assume themselves to be more developed, creative, and powerful than the simple villagers. 

Perpetrators of extraordinary evil are themselves ordinary people. James Waller wrote, “While the evil of genocide is not ordinary, the perpetrators most certainly are”. What could be more ordinary than playing a video game? This game, meant for relaxation, for entertainment, for friendship-building, itself holds the potential for players to commit acts of violence. I do not believe the game developers intended this potential whilst coding the game and its various updates. The question “How can ordinary people commit acts of extraordinary evil?” seemed to me an odd one to ask. Everything I witnessed in this pixelated sandbox game illustrates exactly how ordinary people can commit evil acts. The general culture of cruelty explains the treatment of villagers by players. A culture of cruelty “helps [perpetrators] initiate, sustain, and cope with their extraordinary evil” by simultaneously rewarding and normalizing said evil. Rationalization, group beliefs, and moral disengagement allow players to commit the acts they do while reducing their level of responsibility. Even in my writing, I constantly referred to the villagers with the impersonal “it” pronoun instead of “they” as I tend to do with other video game characters. I understand that connecting people playing video games to perpetrators of mass violence seems odd, but I feel this connection bears significance. If people commit acts of violence in games with no prompt or order, is it so hard to believe that people could commit acts of violence in real life under group prompts and orders? 

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.

To be Polish is to know intimately and painfully that Russian power is often built on the systematic denial of human rights. And today as I watch what is happening in Ukraine, I am reminded that what we are witnessing is not a new story. It is a continuation of an old one.

Russia’s 2014 occupation of Crimea should have been a turning point. Instead, it became just another example of Western rhetoric without resolve. President Barack Obama spoke forcefully about international law and sanctity of borders — but meaningful consequences never followed. No serious deterrent was established. Russia took note.

Now, in 2024, we are watching history repeat, only worse. The current administration quietly negotiates with Putin behind closed doors — deals with the devil made in the name of “realism” or “de-escalation.” The problem is that appeasement by any name is still appeasement. And any honest Eastern European knows where this road leads.

A Legacy of State Violence

Russia’s atrocities are not historical accidents — they are patterns of statecraft. In the Soviet Union, the gulag system imprisoned millions for “counter-revolutionary” thought, including entire ethnic groups — Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans, and Ethnic Poles, totalling over 3,000,000 people. It is also where over 20,000 Polish officers and intelligentsia were executed by the NKVD (a Soviet secret police, a forerunner of the KGB). This is just one example of how the Soviet state dealt with perceived threats: with murder, denial, and impunity.

After World War II, Poland was again carved up, this time not by Nazi Germany, but by a victorious Soviet Union that imposed new borders and a communist regime without consent. Half of Poland was handed over to Stalin. The other half became a Soviet satellite in everything but name. We lost territory, and decades of democracy and freedom.

Today, I watch with deep unease as the same playbook unfolds in Ukraine. Russia has illegally annexed Crimea and large parts of Donbas. It speaks openly of “reintegrating” historically Russian lands. The goal is not just military victory — it is partition. A fractured Ukraine that can never become fully sovereign again. Just like Poland after 1945.

The Price of Strategic Amnesia

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West rushed to welcome Russia into international order. Trade deals, G8 summits, UN security council! All these gestures were made in the name of stability. But stability built on forgetting is not peace. It is denial.

There was no truth commission for Soviet crimes. No international tribunal. No real reckoning. Instead of justice we offered investment. Instead of accountability, we accepted ambiguity. And Russia has learned the lessons well: violence would be met with statements, not sanctions; atrocity with analysis, not action.

The West’s failure to respond meaningfully to earlier aggressions — Chechnya in the 1990s, Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014 — has emboldened the Kremlin. The invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is not an anomaly. It is a result.

A Policy Shift is Long Overdue

If the international community wants to stop this cycle, it needs to stop treating Russian atrocities as isolated crises and start addressing them as symptoms of sustained, state-driven assault on human rights.

This means a shift in policy away from reaction and towards long-term strategy.

War crimes must be prosecuted with urgency and rigor. The International Criminal Court must aggressively analyze and not be afraid to broadcast the misdeeds committed by Russia.

The days of treating Putin as a misunderstood partner must end. Russia is not a flawed democracy; it is a totalitarian state that weaponizes repression at home and abroad. Any diplomatic engagement that ignores this reality is not pragmatism — it is complicity.

The lack of reckoning after the Cold War was a mistake. We need institutions that preserve memory, document abuses, and educate future generations about the true costs of authoritarianism. This includes supporting historical archives, transitional justice initiatives, and survivor testimony.

Memory alone is not enough; we also need structural change. The United Nations, which was founded to prevent future atrocities, now finds itself paralyzed and corrupted by the very powers it was meant to constrain. How can an institution claim to uphold human rights while allowing Russia, a country actively engaged in war crimes, to sit on the Security Council with veto power? This is not diplomacy. It is a theater. The UN needs urgent reform. At the very least, the world’s worst violators of international law should not be allowed to block accountability for their crimes.

Our own government should be ashamed for legitimizing regimes like these through backdoor deals and empty statements. Making compromises with authoritarian states while preaching values at home is not just hypocritical, it is dangerous. It teaches future tyrants that power matters more than principle, and that democratic governments will choose convenience over conviction every time.

The Personal is Political

For me, this isn’t abstract. It is my history. I carry the stories of those who lived under occupation, who endured censorship, who learned to live with fear. And I carry the obligation to speak out — especially now. History only repeats when we refuse to interrupt it. The time to interrupt is now.

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.

Q: How did you end up being the keynote speaker?

Because of my bracelet project. We asked if I could help plant the tree, and they said, “No, we want you to speak.”

A Connection Across Time

Q: Was there a moment when you first learned about Anne Frank that really stuck with you?

Yes. When I was seven, I went downstairs and saw my mom watching a documentary about her. As soon as I saw Anne on the screen, I felt an instant connection. Her hope, everything—I just felt it deeply, and it’s stayed with me ever since.

Q: Why Anne Frank, out of so many historical figures?

Because she was a victim of hate, and she was a modern girl—just like me. I felt such a deep connection to her.

Q: What does she mean to you?

She was just a regular girl, and I could feel her pain. I’ve had my own experiences like that. I could really relate.

Why the Tree Matters

Q: Why did you want to bring Anne Frank’s story and this tree to Fairmont?

So that history doesn’t repeat itself. And to show people that even one person—even someone young—can make a difference.

Q: What can people today learn from Anne Frank’s story?

That hate and discrimination still exist. If we don’t learn from the past, we might repeat it. We need to honor people like Anne and keep their stories alive.

Community Support and Impact

Q: Who helped you with this project?

My mom helped a lot. And I had support from teachers, friends, our principal, and even the superintendent. A lot of people stood behind the idea.

Q: What do you hope people feel when they see the tree?

I hope they feel a connection to Anne. I hope it inspires them to be kind to everyone.

Q: What would you like kids your age to take from this?

To be upstanders, not bystanders. And to know that they can make a difference, too—even if they’re only seven.

Q: Do you think the project has changed your school or community?

Yes. I’ve seen less bullying and more kindness and inclusion.

Q: Do people still talk about it?

Yes! It’s on the school website and the Visit Fairmont site, too.

Looking Ahead

Q: Do you think you’ll take on more projects like this?

Yes. I want to keep doing projects about kindness—anything that brings people together.

Q: What advice would you give to other kids who want to make a difference?

It might be hard at first, but you can do it. Even one small act can change the world.

A Voice That Will Not Be Forgotten

Q: If you could say something to someone whose family was affected by the Holocaust, what would it be?

That we support you in every way possible—and that we see you.

Q: If you could say one thing to Anne Frank, what would it be?

I would tell her that her voice and her story live on in so many hearts—and that I will not let her story disappear.

The Legacy Grows

Natalie’s efforts have already reached beyond her school and town. Her “Put a Stop to Hate” bracelet campaign has distributed nearly 90,000 bracelets across all 50 states and 49 countries. She also had the opportunity to meet Holocaust survivor Trudy Stroo in Los Angeles, who gave Natalie a rare Dutch doll from the 1940s.

This August, Natalie will travel to Amsterdam and visit the Anne Frank House—another chapter in her incredible journey.

The Anne Frank Tree planted in Fairmont is more than just a symbol of remembrance. It’s a living testament to how one young person’s empathy, courage, and action can ripple out into the world.

Fairmont now has an Anne Frank Tree because of Natalie Flaherty. And thanks to her, the message Anne carried so bravely continues to grow—branch by branch, heart by heart.

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. 

This means Doğukan’s hearing will be at the Fort Snelling Immigration Court. The court is one of sixty such courts spread throughout the United States that fall under the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a Department of Justice body. This body is responsible for the process of removal of immigrants, the enforcement of these decisions, and any subsequent appeals. In Minnesota, Fort Snelling is forever connected with the detainment of nearly 1,600 Dakota, almost all of whom were women, children, or elderly, through the winter of 1862-63 before their ultimate forced deportation west from Minnesota to reservations in Dakota Territory (and continued separation from Dakota men). The detainment of Dakota, along with the mass execution of Dakota men in the aftermath of the 1862 war, has been described by many as genocide, including the Minneapolis and St. Paul city councils.

The Fort Snelling Immigration Court is in the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building. Bishop Whipple was an Episcopal Bishop in Minnesota during the 1862 US-Dakota War. In response to the forced removal and the condemnation of 303 Dakota men to death, Bishop Whipple made appeals for clemency to President Lincoln. While Lincoln was ultimately persuaded to pardon all but 38 Dakota men (plus an additional two who were executed at Fort Snelling in 1863), Whipple’s attempts to save the Dakota in Minnesota ultimately came to nothing when Congress abrogated its treaties with the Dakota, and banned Dakota settlement in the state. 

The events unfolding today have connections to events in the past that need to be understood. There’s no shortage of irony that a hearing to decide the immigration status of a University of Minnesota student will be determined in a court named for a site that was instrumental in deporting hundreds of innocent people.

Joe Eggers is the Interim Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.