On the 6^th of October this year, the New York Times published an image of dead African migrants on its front page. Not only was this image on the front page, it was above the fold, meaning that it was the most prominent part of that day’s coverage. The faces of the dead migrants were not blurred out, nor were their semi-nude bodies covered.

The use of images like this to represent human suffering is a topic that I hold near and dear, both through my research,* and also on a much more visceral level.

When viewing an image like this, I ask why such a stark representation of others’ pain need to be displayed? Some have argued that images of pain and suffering act as a mirror through which we can ask ourselves whether we are allies, or bystanders to the suffering of others. Though this may be true, I suggest here that this is a very simplistic approach to understanding images of pain and suffering.

What are the possible reasons to use of this image in a journalistic context? The migrant crisis is a complex issue, but the photo used by the New York Times did not add anything to our understanding of the situation. It did not, for example, tell us why these migrants risk their lives to make such a dangerous journey. It did not tell us why the island of Lampedusa has become a beacon of hope for those fleeing violence in countries such as Libya and Eritrea. It also did nothing towards helping the reader understand other aspects of the crisis, such as the current debates about whether or not we should call them “refugees” or “migrants,” labels which often have very real consequences on people’s life chances wherever they end up settling. Moreover, the use of that image could easily lead the reader to assume that Africans are all running from Africa to go to Europe, ignoring the fact that one of the largest destinations for those leaving the Horn of Africa is not Europe but South Africa.

What images such as those used by the New York Times do is reaffirm several stereotypes about Africa and Africans. It represents Europe as the last best hope for Africans, thus making it worthwhile—even necessary—for them to risk their lives to get to Europe. Just as the coverage of Ebola in 2014, this image is meant to scare readers of Africans showing on European shores. The migrant crisis represents the ever-reliable fourth horseman of the apocalypse, just as the Ebola crisis did in 2014. At the same time, this image is not actually about the living or dead migrants pictured in it, as much as it about Western guilt. The photographs and article, implicitly and explicitly, present this issue as a European problem and ask what we have done to push for some sort of solution. Even in their suffering and death, these African bodies are only useful in as much as they make us want to ‘do something.’

Though some may argue that this is not the case, I pose these questions to you: When was the last time you saw images of dead Westerners on the front page of the New York Times? This is not an argument for moral equivalence, but rather a request for us to think about how we consume images of pain and suffering. Whose pain are we consuming from the comfort of our homes? Why do we need to see images of dead Africans for us to know that there is a crisis unfolding in the Mediterranean? Perhaps most importantly, what if one of those dead migrants had a relative in the U.S. reading the New York Times on the 6^th of October?

* Find Siguru’s recent article on the research on and history of the use of images of the suffering of others here.

Wahutu Siguru is a PhD candidate in the Sociology department at the University of Minnesota. Siguru’s research interests are in the Sociology of Media, Genocide, Mass Violence and Atrocities (specifically on issues of representation of conflicts in Africa such as Darfur and Rwanda), Collective Memory, and perhaps somewhat tangentially Democracy and Development in Africa.

This year, Dr. Hollie Nyseth Brehm (Ohio State)* and Dr. Chris Uggen (UMN) received a Sociology research grant from the National Science Foundation for their project “Enhancing Public Access: Archiving Court Cases to Study Genocide and Transitional Justice.” Wahutu Siguru recently conducted an interview with Professor Nyseth Brehm.

Dr. Hollie Nyseth Brehm, Department of Sociology, Ohio State University

What project/questions led to you applying for the grant?

Dr. Nyseth Brehm: Our project asks three interrelated questions: 1) Who participates in mass violence? 2) What influences legal responses to this participation? And 3) How do legal responses to mass violence impact individuals and societies? To answer these questions, we decided to focus on the case of Rwanda. The 1994 genocide left Rwanda with up to a million people dead, millions more displaced, and societal institutions in shambles. Violence had been orchestrated by a group of political leaders who encouraged civilians to participate by forming self-defense groups, spreading propaganda, and instilling fear. In the aftermath of this horror, the government of Rwanda launched an alternative court system known as the gacaca courts to respond to mass public participation in the violence. The case of Rwanda consequently provides an important case study of who participates in genocide, the legal response to genocide, and the impacts of this legal response.

What do you hope to achieve now that you have gotten the grant?

Dr. Nyseth Brehm: The grant will allow us to put resources toward data collection and analysis. First, we are creating databases of all gacaca court trials. Approximately one million people suspected of participating in the genocide were tried, and we can use the information from their trials to better understand who participates in genocide. The databases we are creating from gacaca court records will also allow us to analyze how the courts functioned, as we can analyze the punishments meted out by the courts and the factors that drove patterns in punishments. Finally, we are also interviewing approximately 250 people who participated in the gacaca court system as defendants, witnesses, and judges. These interviews will allow us to gain a different perspective of the court system—one from those who participated within their communities. We are conducting these interviews in Rwanda, and we are discussing how the gacaca courts functioned and the impacts of the courts on the lives of participants as well as on Rwanda today.

What has been the most surprising thing during the course of preparing for the grant application, or while working on this particular project?

Dr. Nyseth Brehm: I’ve been personally surprised by some of the unintended consequences of the gacaca courts. For example, as the gacaca courts were instituted in local communities, each community elected lay judges known as inyangamugayo to preside over them. These lay jurists did not need legal training but rather were elected because they were seen as people of integrity. The interviews we have conducted with these individuals thus far reveal a high degree of professional commitment among inyangamugayo, illustrating that many saw their main duties as promoting reconciliation and accountability. These duties exacted a heavy personal toll, however, due to the demanding nature of the uncompensated work. Unlike judges in many other parts of the world, the inyangamugayo continued to live and work in extremely close proximity to those they sentenced—and almost every one of those neighbors had been deeply touched by the genocide, the justice system response, and their work as judges. This fact, alongside their often marginal economic circumstances, placed the inyangamugayo in an especially vulnerable position, raising questions that must be considered when local courts are used to hold perpetrators of genocide accountable.

* Dr. Nyseth Brehm has recently published an article on how genocide survivors remember and talk about the genocide in Rwanda.

Interview conducted by Wahutu Siguru, PhD candidate in the Sociology department at the University of Minnesota. Siguru’s research interests are in the Sociology of Media, Genocide, Mass Violence and Atrocities (specifically on issues of representation of conflicts in Africa such as Darfur and Rwanda), Collective Memory, and perhaps somewhat tangentially Democracy and Development in Africa.

A competent accomplished woman goes up against a populist outsider who has created a reputation built on lies.  Sound familiar? Maybe, but this is not about the 2016 US election: it is the plot of the film Denial (2016), based on the true story of the trial between Jewish Studies and Holocaust scholar Deborah E. Lipstadt and British Holocaust denier David Irving.

There is no denying that Denial is a film for our times. Conceived nine years ago, and filmed in 2015, the parallels between the trial and the President election is not lost on viewers. Frustratingly, we do seem to live in a time in which history is ignored, facts seem like an inconvenience and there is a prevailing ideology – that one’s opinion is more important, regardless if you can back it up with facts or not.  What happens in this scenario is that there can be no debate between anyone because those espousing opinion, cannot rationally articulate their argument against those who cite facts.

How to handle someone who bends the truth for their own purposes and how one needs to combat these individuals is what lies at the heart of the film, which is based on Lipstadt’s book, History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier (2005) about her experience of being sued by the British author, David Irving for libel under English law.  Irving sued in reaction to what Lipstadt wrote about him her 1993 work, Denying the Holocaust, where she referred to him as a dangerous denier of the Holocaust based on his popularity with the public and several prominent historians through his books about the Third Reich and World War II.

Irving (played by Timothy Spall) proudly plays upon of his self-made historian persona, which makes him very popular with right wing and neo-Nazi audiences, who embraced his assertions that equated the allies’ crimes to the crimes of the Third Reich and that Hitler was either unaware of the murder of millions of Jews or was their friend in halting the murders, done by his underlings.

The film portrays Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) and her lawyer Richard Rampton (Tom Wilkinson) not so much as who they are as people, but more as tropes in dealing with the approach to the trial.  Rampton is portrayed symbolically as someone who is able to separate law from history, he silences his emotions to gather the evidence he needs to prove that Irving is a fraud under English law. On the other side is Lipstadt, (representing both her conscience and ours) who is more vocal in regards to the emotional impact that the history of the Holocaust has on the survivors and on us to remember the six million in a respectful way.  Lipstadt wants to testify, and include survivors to be sure they get justice, Rampton and the rest of the team repudiate this strategy, instead insisting she and the survivors remain silent.

By doing this the filmmakers create a tension between the two that drives the film, and is best illustrated by the scenes in Auschwitz.  Once there, we accompany Rampton as he visits the camp’s museum. He is alone, quietly taking photos of the mounds of eye glasses and luggage. As he enters the room with the shoes, the camera tracks around the display cases, disorientating us. It is overwhelming and nauseating, allowing us to sense how Rampton is feeling, giving us his point of view. Next we see him, as if we are looking out of the case, his face is tight, his jaw clenched, as he tries to separate what he feels from the information he must gather.

In the next scene we are introduced to an annoyed Lipstadt as she voices her displeasure at Rampton’s tardiness as they wait for him at Birkenau. Later in the scene she will also have a very emotional reaction to what she perceives as his lack of respect for the sanctity of Auschwitz as memorial, to honor those who were murdered there.  What is discovered and perceived at Auschwitz is central to the narrative of the film over the debate of how the case is being fought.

Once in court Lipstadt is forced to sit silently, as Irving spins his revisionist narrative. Anyone (myself included) who has ever had to sit through a presentation given by a denier or has been attacked by one at a lecture, knows the frustration of having to remain quiet as they ramble off their lies. The real life Lipstadt recently remarked at a discussion about the film, that for her remaining silent is an “unnatural act.” (USHMM September 28, 2016) Even in silence, Lipstadt was still defending history, the survivors and the six million.

The filmmakers reinforce her bravery in accepting the case by linking her to other women who have stood up in the face of adversity.  The first being the Hebrew heroine and prophetess Deborah who leads the Israelites to defeat Canaanites (who Lipstadt is named for), and second, Queen Boudicea of the British tribe the Iceni, who led a revolt against the Romans in 60-61BCE, much to her own personal peril and loss.  The film brings this symbol to the forefront by having Lipstadt run by Boudicea’s statue on her many outings to relieve stress during the trial.  I did wonder if indeed Lipstadt was a jogger, and discovered she was, but the film uses it to remind us that Lipstadt is someone who runs towards a fight not away from it.

In the end the trial is Irving’s downfall, defeated by his own assertions. At a lecture she gave at the Jerusalem Center in June of 2004, Lipstadt recounted that at some points in the trial they were able to expose Irving not only as a falsifier of history but as an irrational and foolish figure. “Defeating him was important. The battle against people like this is to defeat them in a way that does not make them important. One must dress or let them dress themselves in the Jester’s costume, in that way it is he, who survives to give witness to his own powerlessness.”

Jodi Elowitz is an adjunct professor of the Humanities at Gateway Community College in Phoenix, Arizona, and former Program Coordinator for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

October 14, 2016

To: President Barack Obama;

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon;

Prince Zeid, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

The Special Advisors on the Prevention of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity to the UN Secretary General, respectively.

U.S. Senator John Boozman (R-AR); U.S. Senator McGovern (D-MA); and, U.S. House of Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Eliot Engel (D-NY)

From: Scholars of Genocide Studies from Across the Globe, Human Rights Activists, Anti-genocide Activists, and People of the Cloth

Re., Actions That Must Be Taken Immediately in Regard to the Chemical Attacks on Darfur

As most of you are no doubt aware of, this past week Amnesty International issued a report in which it decried and spelled out in great detail how the Government of Sudan has recently carried out chemical attacks against civilians in Darfur. In part, the report asserts that “horrific evidence,” including satellite imagery and more than 200 in-depth interviews with survivors, along with the analysis of dozens of images, suggest “at least 30 chemical attacks between January and September took place in the Jebel Marra region.” AI estimates that between 200 and 250 people were killed as a result of these attacks, “with many or most of them being children.” Whether you deem it a continuation of the genocidal actions against the Darfurians, a case of crimes against humanity, or war crimes, it is an outrage.

And the horror for the civilians of Darfur does not end there. Tellingly, AI cited satellite imagery that indicated that over 170 black villages had been damaged or destroyed between January and September, “the overwhelming majority” of which had no formal relationship with the rebel forces in the region.

What is it going to take to move the international community (the UN, the United States, the European Union, the African Union, etc.) to once and for all quell the violence in Darfur against the civilian population and then guarantee the million plus internal displaced persons and half a million (and rising) refugees are able to safely return to the land and villages from which they were forced off and out of as a result of the GoS’s scorched earth actions between 2003 and today? Can anyone say? Will anyone say?

As you know, on September 9, 2004, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell announced to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “The Government of Sudan had committed genocide, and was possibly still doing so.” As it was allowed to do under the UN Charter, the U.S. Government then referred the matter to the United Nations. The United Nations then chose to carry out its own commission of inquiry (UN Commission of Inquiry into Darfur).  And while tens of thousands of innocent people (women, children, infants, the elderly) were shot and killed, sliced open and left to die where they dropped, not to mention burned to death, the UN took the rest of the month of September and all of October to complete the plans for its inquiry and then took all of November and part of December 2004 and January 2005 to carry it out. In late January, the UN issued a detailed and scathing report in which it declared that the GoS and its militia, the Janjaweed, had carried out crimes against humanity against the people of Darfur. The UN then referred the matter to the International Criminal Court (the ICC). The then ICC carried out its multi-year investigation into the mass destruction and death in Darfur at the hands of the GoS and Janjaweed.

An African Union peacekeeping mission was established in Darfur in 2004, followed by a hybrid AU/UN Mission in July 2007, when the AU found that it did not have the wherewithal to handle the crisis on its own. In light of the large number of civilians either forced from their homes between 2004 and today and/or killed, it is patently obvious that neither mission was effective as some had hoped they would be. And actually, if one could muster the will to place him/herself in the Darfuris’ shoes then one is likely to agree with them that both missions were complete and utter failures. That must change, and it must change now! The time for talk, talk and more talk is not when innocents are crying and dying. The time for handling President Omar al Bashir and his regime with kid gloves should have been over long ago. The time for dithering (or, like Nero, playing the fiddle), while parts of Darfur (like Rome) are being poisoned to death must end   — and now.

All of the eloquent words and promises of “Never Again” ring hollow in the face of what the black Africans of Darfur have been subjected to by both the GoS, theJanjaweed, and, yes, the international community (with the exception of those who have provided humanitarian aid) over the past thirteen plus years (2003-2016). Indeed, all of the promises have yielded nothing but more pain for the Darfuris, more gain for the GoS, and more pathetic examples of hypocrisy by the collective members of the international community. Shame on all bystanders. Shame on all of us!

It is not enough for one official or another, let alone the UN Security Council, to simply, solely, and lamely decry and denounce the latest atrocities perpetrated by the Government of Sudan. Words only go so far. Words have a tendency to evaporate into thin air. What is needed now is action: concrete action that is efficient, effective and sustained.

One has to ask: Where is the impact of the Responsibility to Protect? Why didn’t the UN Special Advisors on Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity to the Secretary General, speak up about the critical need for concrete and effective action to stanch the use of chemical weapons back in January? And when none was coming, why did the Special Advisors continue to not only allow, but to take part in, bureaucratic games? Are they truly serious about stanching crimes against humanity and genocide? People are dying, people! Nice sounding speeches and policy papers don’t do them one bit of good if they are not followed by solid action.

Where has President Obama’s Atrocity Prevention Board been while all of these atrocities have been unfolding? And now that it is surely aware of the chemical attacks against the Darfurians, what is it doing? Or is the APB, to use colloquial phrase, more show than go? That is, is it more cosmetic than anything else?

Where has the UN Security Council been in upholding the UN Charter in this regard? Silence in the face of cases such as this constitutes, in its own and inimitable (and inimical) way, complicity. If organizations, agencies and individuals are not actively involved in attempting to stanch such horrors, then they are bystanders watching it unfold before their very eyes, as if they have nary a worry in the world.

This is not the time for excuses by the international community, individual nations, and politicians   — excuses such as we are over stretched, we are already dealing with a nightmare in Syria, we are dealing with hundreds of thousands of refugees on the front doorstep of Europe, we are dealing with ISIS, etc.! We know all of that! We also know that for all of the promises that have been made to the civilians of Darfur and all of the inept actions that have been carried out at the costs of hundreds of millions of dollars, the people of Dafur are no safer today than they were at the height of the killing back in 2004 and 2005.

The following is what we urge the UN Security Council and individual nation states, including the United States, Australia, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Kenya, Tanzania, and New Zealand, etc., to do immediately, and without fail:

1. Pass a resolution at the UN Security Council, which thoroughly condemns — and in no uncertain words — the latest round of atrocities perpetrated by the Government of Sudan;

2. Significantly ratchet up the UN sanctions against Sudan, which Sudan has largely ignored and been breaching on a regular basis;

3. Significantly ratchet up targeted sanctions against individuals and other entities in Sudan contributing to the conflict in the Darfur region — to the point just before the sanctions begin to cripple the aforementioned groups; and,

4. Significantly increase the number of AU/UN military forces on the ground, and implement a rigorous evaluation policy to determine whether the individual forces are actually carrying out their duties efficiently, effectively, and consistently.

5. Provide the latest and best health care for those Darfurians who have been burned and sickened as a result of the chemicals dumped on them by the Government of Sudan.

6. Once and for all, establish a no-fly zone over Darfur. It need not consist of a constant presence in the sky but rather a presence that makes itself known to the Government of Sudan.

Further, we support the following recommendations/call for actions issued this past week by the Darfur Women Action Group:

• We urgently call on the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to investigate the use of chemical weapons;
• We trust that the International Criminal Court (ICC) will also investigate and prosecute the latest crimes committed by the al-Bashir government and forces;
• We call on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to implement its existing resolutions condemning serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law by the government of Sudan, and to ensure that the Sudanese Government and its officials are held accountable and brought to justice immediately;
• We call on President Barack Obama and all world leaders of good conscience to condemn the ongoing genocide in Darfur and to lead the international community in calling for an immediate stop to all violence against civilians in Darfur and to impose more effective sanctions to prevent further atrocities by the Sudanese Government; and,
• The United States and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) must pressure the Sudanese Government to allow humanitarian aid organizations and the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) to deliver much needed aid and support to all affected communities in Darfur.
We call on all governments and intergovernmental organizations alike to match their resolutions with meaningful action to hold the government of Sudan and its officials accountable and to demand that these cruel acts of horror are immediately stopped and punished.

As the sage Hillel asked, “If not now, when?” Clearly, it is an admonition to postpone no responsibility. If what the civilians of Darfur have been facing and continue to face is not a situation that calls for moral responsibility on the part of the international community then what is? Truly, what is?

We, scholars of genocide studies, human rights activists, anti-crimes against humanity and genocide activists, and religious figures, concerned citizens all from across the globe, beseech you to act and act now on the behalf of the Darfurian civilians.

We would appreciate acknowledgement of this letter/requests. Please email it to samstertotten@gmail.com

Thank you for your attention to these matters.

Signed:

Dr. Samuel Totten
Professor Emeritus
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Author of Genocide by Attrition: Nuba Mountains of Sudan, and compiler/editor of An Oral and Documentary History of the Darfur Genocide

Baroness Caroline Cox
Cross Bench Member of the British House of Lords, and Founder of the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART)
London, England

Professor Ben Kiernan,
Whitney Griswold Professor of History and
Founding Director (1994-2015), Genocide Studies Program,
Yale University
New Haven, CT
Author of Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur

Dr Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe
Researcher
Dakar, Sénégal
Author of Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature

Dr. Israel Charny
Professor Emeritus, and Director of the Institute of Holocaust And Genocide Studies
Department of Psychology
Hebrew University
Jerusalem, Israel
Author of The Genocide Contagion

Dr. Michiel Leezenberg
Professor
Department of Philosophy
University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Author of “The Anfal Operations in Iraqi Kurdistan.” In S. Totten & W.S. Parsons (Eds.), Centuries of Genocide: Essays and Eyewitness Accounts.

Dr. Eric Reeves
Senior Fellow
François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
Author of A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide

Dr. Helen Fein
Institute for the Study of Genocide
New York, NY
Author of Accounting for Genocide

Dr. Colin Tatz
Visiting Fellow, Political and International Relations
Australian National University
Canberra, Australia
Author of With Intent to Destroy: Reflecting on Genocide

Dr. Herb Hirsch
Department of Political Science
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond, VA
Author of Genocide and the Politics of Memory: Studying Death to Preserve Life, and Co-editor of Genocide Studies International

Dr. Maureen S. Hiebert
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Military, Security & Strategic Studies
University of Calgary
Author of Constructing Genocide and Mass Violence: Society, Crisis, Identity (forthcoming)

Dr. Victoria Sanford
Professor & Chair, and Director, Center for Human Rights & Peace Studies
Department of Anthropology
Lehman College
New York, New York
Author of Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala

Ms. Gillian Lusk
Writer on Sudan and South Sudan
London, UK

Dr. Rouben Adalian
Director, Armenian National Institute
Washington, DC
Editor of The Armenian Genocide in the U.S. Archives

Dr. Yair Auron
Historian
Open University
Ra’anana, Israel
Author of The Armenian Genocide: Forgotten and Denied

Dr. Henry C. Theriault
Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department
Worcester State University
Worcester, MA
Co-editor of Genocide Studies International

Dr. Elihu D. Richter, MD MPH
Director and Researcher
Jerusalem Center for Genocide Prevention and Hebrew-University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine
Jerusalem, Israel

Dr. Rubina Peroomian
Research Associate
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
University of California, Los Angeles

Dr. Taner Ackam
Professor of History
Robert Aram, Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marian Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies
Department of History
Clark University
Worcester, MA
Author of The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire

Dr. Kimberley Ducey
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology
University of Winnipeg
Winnipeg, MB

Dr. Peter Balakian
Rebar Professor of the Humanities
Colgate University
Hamilton, New York
Author of The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response

Dr. John H. Weiss
Professor, and Founder, Caceres-Neuffer Genocide Action Group
Department of History
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York

Dr. Rick Halperin
Professor, Director of the Embrey Human Rights Program, and past Chair of the Board of Directors of Amnesty International, US
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, Texas

Dr. Salim Mansur
Associate Professor
Department of Political Science
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada

Dr. Paul Slovic
University of Oregon
Department of Psychology
Eugene, Oregon
Author of If I Look at the Mass I Will Never Act: Psychic Numbing and Genocide.

Professor Michael Bazyler
Professor of Law and The 1939 Society Scholar in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies
Dale E. Fowler School of Law
Chapman University
‪Orange, CA

Dr. Linda M. Woolf
Professor
Psychology and International Human Rights
Webster University
St. Louis, MO

Dr. Waitman Wade Beorn
Lecturer
Corcoran Department of History
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA

Dr. Jan Colijn
Professor and Dean Emeritus
Richard Stockton College of New Jersey
Galloway Township, NJ
Author of Ruin’s Wheel: A Father on War, A Son on Genocide

Dr. Jason J. Campbell
Assistant Professor
Departments of Conflict Resolution and Philosophy
Nova Southeastern University
Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Author of Planning a Catastrophe: On the Nature of Genocidal Intent.

Dr. Yael Stein MD
Co-founder, the Jerusalem Center for Genocide Prevention
Jerusalem, Israel

The Rev. Heidi McGinness
Presbyterian Clergy (PC-USA)
Denver, Colorado
(Twelve year witness of Khartoum’s genocide and enslavement of
Sudanese citizens.)

Dr Kevin Simpson
Professor of Psychology
John Brown University
Siloam Springs, AR
Author of Soccer under the Swastika: Stories of Survival and Resistance during the Holocaust

Dr. Robert Skloot
Professor Emeritus
Department of Theatre
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Sister Deirdre Byrne
The Little Workers of the Sacred Heart
Washington, DC

Alexander Ramadan Tarjan
Member
End Nuba Genocide
Nuba Mountains, Sudan

Dr. Paul Mojzes
Professor emeritus
Rosemont College
Rosemont, PA
Author: Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century

Slater Armstrong
Founder/Director
Joining Our Voices & co-leader of End Nuba Genocide
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

John Jefferson
Co-founder
End Nuba Genocide
United States

Dr. Michael Minch
Professor of Philosophy and Peace and Justice Studies
Utah Valley University
Orem, Utah

Dr. C. Louis Perrinjaquet, MD, MPH
Vice President and Medical Director
Doctors to the World
Breckinridge, Colorado

Dr. Dick Bennett
Professor Emeritus, and Founder, OMNI Center for Peace, Justice, and Ecology
University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, AR
Compiler, Peace Movement Directory

Dr. Gagik Aroutiunian
Associate Professor,
Department of Art, Media & Design,
DePaul University,
Chicago, IL

Dr. John K. Roth
Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy
Claremont McKenna College
Claremont, California
Author of The Failures of Ethics: Confronting the Holocaust, Genocide, and Other Mass Atrocities

Dr. Edward Kissi
Associate Professor
University of South Florida
Tampa, FL
Author of “Obligation to Prevent (O2P): Proposal for Enhanced Community Approach to Genocide Prevention in Africa,” African Security Review

Dr. Debórah Dwork
Rose Professor of Holocaust History and Founding Director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Clark University
Worcester, MA
Author of  Flight from the Reich

Dr. Michael Berenbaum
Former Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Holocaust Research Institute (1993–1997); currently, Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust
American Jewish University
Los Angeles, CA
Author of Witness to the Holocaust, and The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Dr. Khatchik Der Ghougassian
Professor
Universidad de San Andres
Victoria, Buenos Aires, Argentina
“Genocide and Identity (Geo)Politics: Bridging State Reasoning and Diaspora Activism” in Genocide Studies International

Dr. Alejandro Baer
Stephen C. Feinstein Chair & Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Associate Professor,  Department of Sociology
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN

Dr. Deborah Mayersen
Historian
University of Wollongong
Wollongong NSW
Australia
Author of On the Path to Genocide: Armenia and Rwanda Reexamined

Dr. Norman Naimark
Department of History
Stanford University
Stanford, CA
Author of Stalin’s Genocides

Dr. Yehuda Bauer
Professor Emeritus of History and Holocaust Studies
The Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry
Hebrew University
Jerusalem, Israel
Author of Rethinking the Holocaust

Dr. Kjell Anderson
University of Amsterdam/NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Author of A Criminology of Genocide: Killing Without Consequence (forthcoming)

Dr. Eric D. Weitz
Distinguished Professor of History
The City College of New York
New York, NY
Author of Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation

Dr. Alex Alvarez
Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice
Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff, AZ
Author of Genocidal Crimes

Dr. Gregory Stanton
Research Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention
School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution
George Mason University
Arlington, VA

Ms. Rebecca Tinsley
Journalist and Human Rights Activist
London, England

Dr. Tetsushi Ogata, Ph.D.
Lecturer
Peace and Conflict Studies  — International & Area Studies Academic Program
University of California, Berkeley

Dr. Ervin Staub
Professor Emeritus
Founding Director of the Doctoral program in the Psychology of Peace and Violence
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Author of The Roots of Goodness and Resistance to Evil: Inclusive Caring, Moral Courage, Altruism Born of Suffering, Active Bystandership and Heroism

Dr. Mukesh Kapila CBE
Professor of Global Health and Humanitarian Affairs
University of Manchester
Manchester, England
Author of Against a Tide of Evil: How One Man Became the Whistleblower of the Twenty-First Century.

Rami Malek recently won an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a drama series for his role in Mr. Robot, designating him as the first “non-white” actor to win this award in 18 years. Malek was born in the US to Coptic Christian-Egyptian parents, meaning that his win is widely celebrated amongst Arab, Egyptian, Coptic, and American communities. This win highlights the fluidity and complexity of identity, and particularly sheds light on debates about Copts as Egyptians, Copts as Arabs, and Middle Easterners and North Africans as non-white.

In Egypt, the state and some civilians have adopted a nationalist rhetoric of unity between Copts and Muslims as a way to overlook sectarian violence targeted against Copts. Recent incidents of religious strife–mainly occurring in upper Egypt–have included the stripping and dragging of an elderly Coptic women in the streets under allegations that her son was in a relationship with a Muslim woman, other incidents have involved the burning down of churches and attacks against Christian homes. President Sisi has continuously and publicly affirmed that all Egyptians are equal, which is also supported by Coptic Pope Tawadros II. The Church promotes this narrative as a way to ensure that a Coptic identity is recognized as being central to an Egyptian identity, while also pushing for Egypt to protect Copts under the law.

As the debate surrounding Copts being integral to Egypt is tied to contemporary politics, there is also a different ongoing debate about whether or not Copts are Arab. In my research, opinions varied greatly. On the one hand, there were those who refused to identify as Arab, referring to Arabs as invaders who destroyed Coptic culture and language. Instead, claims of being the modern sons of pharaohs and the indigenous people of Egypt are a great source of pride and honor. On the other hand, others believe that because they communicate in the Arabic language and live in the Middle East they are Arab.

In the US, as of 1944, people of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) descent are officially recognized as racially white. Before 1944, during the immigration process, MENA people would claim whiteness as a result of anti-black citizenship laws that lasted until 1952. Despite being officially considered to be white, MENA people do not reap all the benefits of white privilege and are exposed to heightened surveillance and increases in hate crimes, especially post 9/11. As a result of consistent lobbying and advocacy, the Census Bureau is exploring the possibility of adding a MENA box in the 2020 census, which will allow for more accurate data and therefore ensure better and more particular services for the MENA community.

Identity is fluid and shifts throughout time and space. It is also political, and in these cases closely tied to histories of violence and how conflict shapes group identification. Ultimately, however, as Khaled Beydoun writes, “Now whether Malek made “Arab-American” or “Egyptian-American” history ultimately hinges on how the Emmy winner identifies himself: picking one side of the Arab and Coptic divide, or choosing to embrace both. Whatever he chooses, everybody wins.”

Miray is a Ph.D. graduate student in Sociology with a focus on violence, collective memory, and the Middle East and North Africa. Miray’s current research is focused on how Copts in Kuwait, Egypt and the US make sense of their present-day experiences and historical memory. She is also the 2016-17 Badzin Fellow. 

As the academic year begins, there are four countries that I will largely be keeping an eye on.

The first country is Burundi, where extrajudicial killings have increased since the hostilities began last year. There still seems to a jarring lack of attention on this small East African nation that has had a long history of strife and atrocity.

Next is Zimbabwe, where tensions that began during the summer with a rallying call from a Zimbabwean pastor led to a one-day strike on the 6^th of July. This launched a movement called #ThisFlag, which has become a thorn in the government’s side. All of this is happening under the shadow of persistent rumors about president Mugabe’s failing health.

The third nation this column will focus on will be the West African nation of Gabon, where, following disputed election results, the nation has seen riots between supporters of president Bongo and Jean Ping. This particular election is all the more interesting considering that Jean Ping is the previous chairperson of the Commission of the African Union, yet he called for the United States rather than the African Union to intervene in the riots.

The last country that I want to draw your attention to this academic year is South Sudan. Even before the ink dried from the previous peace deal, conflict erupted in the country. Just this year the United Nations accused South Sudanese troops of raping young girls and women by the hundreds. As more refugees stream into Uganda, there are testimonies that armed actors are continually targeting young girls and women for sexual violence. Yet despite all of this, South Sudan poses unique challenges to both the United States and the United Nations. The United States finds itself in a precarious situation after an attack on U.S. diplomats by the South Sudanese presidential guard of Salva Kiir. The attack highlights the dangerous turn this conflict has taken; American diplomats are often viewed as the most protected diplomats around the world, yet these soldiers showed a brazenness that had hitherto been unseen. Despite this attack, there is still hesitation in enforcing an arms embargo on South Sudan. For the United Nations, South Sudan has highlighted all the things that several scholars of the global south have found frustrating, even annoying, about the United Nations. The greatest of which has always been the UN’s peacekeeping troops perceived incapability in actually helping to stop violence. It has come to light this summer that South Sudanese troops went on a four-hour rampage, raping several foreign aid workers, singling out Americans, and killing a South Sudanese journalist. All of this occurred in a compound that was less than a mile away from the UN peacekeeping forces. UN troops did not come to the aid of the workers despite desperate calls for help.

Five years after South Sudan’s independence, we find ourselves staring at a quagmire and wondering what could have been. This, coupled by the constant dithering by the UN and the US, is what frustrates me the most.

Wahutu Siguru is a PhD candidate in the Sociology department at the University of Minnesota. Siguru’s research interests are in the Sociology of Media, Genocide, Mass Violence and Atrocities (specifically on issues of representation of conflicts in Africa such as Darfur and Rwanda), Collective Memory, and perhaps somewhat tangentially Democracy and Development in Africa.

In March, Gender & Society published an article titled, Gender-Based Violence Against Men and Boys in Darfur: The Gender-Genocide Nexus. The paper, co-authored by Dr. Gabrielle Ferrales (Sociology, UMN), Dr. Hollie Nyseth-Brehm (Ohio State) and Suzy McElrath (Ph.D. Candidate, UMN), analyses gender-based violence against men and boys during mass atrocity. Demonstrating new theoretical connections between gender, violence, and hegemonic masculinity, this work significantly advances our understanding of how genocidal violence is gendered, but also more broadly how gender inequalities can be reproduced and maintained in diverse settings and social structures.

Wahutu Siguru:  What was the motivation behind this paper?

Dr. Ferrales: Though scholars have debated how gender facilitates and patterns violence, what is gendered about gender-based violence in any context remains understudied. Along this line more specifically, there is insufficient empirical work on gender-based violence against men and boys during mass atrocity. Yet, a more inclusive approach provides an opportunity to test, evaluate, and refine existing theory.
Current scholarship has also predominantly focused narrowly on rape by men against women. Yet, rape is but one form of gender-based violence perpetrated against men, boys, women, and girls during mass conflict. Drawing on the case of Darfur, we demonstrate how gender-based violence against men and boys constitutes an extensive range of physical and psychological actions, including acts of penetration, sexual assault, genital mutilation, forced nudity, culturally inappropriate actions that sexually harass or humiliate victims, as well as non-sexual acts perpetrated on the basis of gender, such as sex-selective killing. This expansive focus allows us to advance theoretical linkages between gender and genocide to illuminate why and how this violence occurs.

There appears to be a significant lack of scholarship on gendered violence against men during mass atrocity [your paper seems to add onto those by Charli Carpenter (2006) and Lisa Sharlach (1999)]. Why aren’t more scholars looking at this particular facet of mass atrocities?

This research is in its infancy and has faced several limitations, including limited sources of systematically collected data due to the underreporting of gender-based violence. This applies to victimization of men and boys, but also women and girls. Men specifically underreport due to shame and also significantly, their failure to conceptualize themselves as victims of gender-based violence. Work by professor Karen Weiss alerts us to the fact that when male victims do report gender-based violence, they frame their experiences in ways to reassert their masculinity, such as emphasizing how they vigorously fought back against their attacker. Similarly, international aid workers have lagged in recognizing men as victims, or potential victims, of forms of gender-based violence.

You state that both the body and gender become salient organizing principles of interaction. Would you expound on why and how?

This is a rather immense question, let me start with explaining why. Hegemonic masculinity or an emphasis on men’s physical strength, aggression, and sexuality patterns social interaction. It is omnipresent, not only in this context, but more broadly in social systems that construct men as heterosexual and dominant. Stated simply, specific norms about gender will pattern violence, where crime becomes a resource to invoke hyper-masculinity.

Gender-based violence manifests in multiple ways and contexts during mass atrocity. We identify a gender-genocide nexus where violence establishes, enforces, and reproduces gender-hierarchies within the broader social system. Candace West and Don Zimmerman originally coined the term doing gender illustrating how gender is a social construct or a product of social interaction between individuals, as well as social groups. In our case, we illustrate how dominant norms regarding gender influence forms of mass violence such as rape, genital mutilation and sex-selective killing. More specifically, doing gender through violence produces differences between groups along gender constructs that link heteronormativity, power, and ethnicity with the collective goal of eradicating the Darfuri enemy group. Specifically, we show how Darfuri men were systematically denied the attributes of dominant heterosexual masculinity and demarcated as outgroup members through four mechanisms of emasculation. Individual perpetrators, victims, and collective ethnic groups thus assume divergent yet interconnected roles of emasculators and emasculated. In this way, gender-based violence reaffirms the perpetrators own masculine dominance while simultaneously proclaiming power over the ethnic victim groups. Significantly, victimization of an individual is emblematic of the victimization of the entire community. Violence then is not only based on gender ideology but affects gender norms in cyclical, mutually reinforcing social processes that foster an exclusionary social order.

What, if any, was the most surprising finding for you as you wrote this paper?

How explicit norms regarding masculinity surfaced. For example, in one instance a perpetrator held a woman’s son hostage. He made her pay ransom in addition to forcing her to explicitly state that Arabs were the only “real” men. This strikingly illuminates how manhood is intimately linked with ethnicity. Another notable finding was the occurrence of post-mortem rape. This specific act not only emasculates the individual victim but brings shame to his family at large violating sacred burial norms and the victim’s standing in the afterlife.

What message do you hope the reader of this paper leaves with?

In order to theoretically advance our understandings of gender-based violence during mass atrocity, we need future research which examines the multiplicity of victimization of men, women, boys, and girls. While we caution that our findings reflect the Darfur case, they nevertheless highlight the importance of gendered analyses of mass violence and of uncovering the mechanisms through which gender inequalities are reproduced and become embedded in social structures. Specifically, we need more comparative work accounting for variation in extent and forms of gender-based violence across conflicts. There is also a need for both national and international courts to address both the scale and the nature of gender-based violence in mass atrocity.

Beyond this case, gender-based violence against men is not aberrant or confined to mass conflict but is prevalent in social systems that construct men as heterosexual and dominant. Gendered identities—typically masculine identities that emphasize strength, and courage—are privileged in settings ranging from the U.S. to Sudan. Following this line of inquiry, future research must further investigate how myriad forms of crime are linked to hegemonic masculinity.

Interview conducted by Wahutu Siguru, Ph.D. candidate in the University of Minnesota’s Sociology Department.

Dr. Barbara Weissberger is an emerita professor in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies. Next month, she will be presenting her work at the Blood Libel Then & Now: The Enduring Impact of an Imaginary Event conference in New York City.  

The Edict of Expulsion of all unconverted Jews that Queen Isabel and King Fernando issued in April of 1492 ended more than a millennium of co-existence between Christians and Jews in the Spanish kingdoms. Between 1391 and 1413 that often fragile co-existence began to unravel when real and threatened violence against Jews caused a massive wave of conversion to Christianity, creating a diverse group known as conversos. Prior to the conversions, blood libel accusations against Jews in Spain, unlike in the rest of Europe, had been exceedingly rare.

The conversos varied widely in their religious beliefs and practices, from those who were devout Christians, to those who combined beliefs and practices of both Judaism and Christianity, to those who held no religious beliefs at all. But unlike Jews, conversos fell under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, instituted by Papal decree in 1478 to eradicate heresy. It quickly created a climate of fear and denunciation between so- called “Old” and “New” Christians that set the stage for the spectacular blood libel accusation that is the subject of my presentation: the case of the Santo Niño de La Guardia or Holy Child of La Guardia. In 1487-88, a group of Jewish and converso neighbors from two villages near Toledo were arrested by the Inquisition, accused of kidnapping, torturing, and crucifying a Christian boy. No child was ever reported missing; no body ever found. Nevertheless, after a long trial, six conversos and two Jews were found guilty and burned at the stake in an auto-de-fe on November 16, 1491. Modern scholars maintain that these events were instrumental in the royal decision just a few months later to expel Spain’s Jews. The testimony of the accused and other trial documents in this trumped-up case reveal both the complex daily interaction of Christians and Jews living under the scrutiny of the Inquisition and the Inquisition’s determination to read coexistence as a threat to the unity and security of the emerging nation. Isabel and Fernando, engaged in a long war of succession, were highly susceptible to the insistence of Inquisitor General Tomás de Torquemada that expelling the Jews would eliminate social and political tension by imposing religious unity. The political appropriation of the La Guardia myth persisted up to the twentieth century and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco and his ideology of National Catholicism.

Barbara Weissberger has written extensively on gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and sovereignty in Medieval and Renaissance Spanish literature, and is considered a leading feminist scholar in the field of Hispanomedievalism.  She is currently working on a book-project, entitled Anti-Semitism and Nationhood in Spain: 1490-1945.

J. Siguru Wahutu was born and raised in Kenya and moved to Minneapolis to pursue his undergraduate education. He graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BA in Sociology and Global Studies and a minor in Cultural Studies. He stayed in Minnesota to obtain his PhD in Sociology with a thematic focus on genocide, media and collective memory and a regional focus on Africa. Wahutu is broadly interested in how news organizations and journalists in Africa produce knowledge about genocide and mass atrocity in neighboring African countries. He was the 2013-2014 and the 2015 Badzin Fellow in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He also writes for the CHGS blog on current events in Africa.

Wahutu’s current research focuses on how Africa’s media represented the violence in Darfur between 2003 and 2008 and compares this to how media from the global north portrayed events in Darfur during the same period. This research project aims to examine the process through which African news organizations frame atrocities and actors in atrocities for their national audiences. While much has been written about how the global north represents the global south during instances of mass violence, little is known about how Africa represents Africa. This is the gap in scholarship that Wahutu’s work fills. During the 2016-2017 academic year, Wahutu will be editing his dissertation and submitting research papers to academic journals.

On August 20^th, the Star Tribune published a story highlighting the incredible disparity between Native Americans and the rest of Minnesota in foster care placement. According to Stahl and Webster’s article, American Indian youth are ten times more likely to end up in foster care in comparison to the rest of the state. On average, two indigenous youth are sent to foster homes in Minnesota every day, the highest rate in the nation.

The sheer number of Native American children being sent to foster care in the United States is creating a significant problem. In 1978 Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). At the time, it was an attempt to keep Native American youth in tribal communities by placing them with Native foster families whenever possible. Now nearly thirty years later, Minnesota has a shortage of Native American foster homes to house the increasing number of children being taken from their home.

The ICWA was a response to the destructive policies of assimilation that were common place in the United States, like the boarding school system. These were deliberate attempts to force indigenous people into mainstream White society by stripping them of their cultural identity. Over the course of decades of implementation, forced assimilation policies created generations of disconnect between Native Americans and their heritage. It amounted to one of history’s most wide scale examples of cultural genocide.

Decades of substance abuse, poverty and violence in Native American communities, brought on as a sad legacy of past assimilation policies, is leading to an epidemic of children being removed from their homes. However, the ICWA, which was meant to protect Native youth, is causing division amongst communities. Some are calling it another example of youth being forcibly removed from their home. Other indigenous leaders point to the rates of domestic violence (the Star Tribune article says Native American youth are five times more likely to suffer abuse in the home) and addiction as reasons why the system is both necessary and a service to indigenous youth.

Across the country, issues surrounding foster care and the removal of indigenous youth are sparking controversy. Back in 2011, National Public Radio featured a series of stories on the effects of foster care in Native American communities in South Dakota. In March, a California court decision made headlines when it ruled a Choctaw girl should be sent back to her birth parents, despite pleas from the foster parents and the child herself.

It is clear there is immense distrust between indigenous communities and state institutions. There is increasing evidence that the centuries of destructive genocidal policies imposed against indigenous people in the United States has led to historical trauma, which is trauma that has been passed from generation to generation. This means that as a result of historical loss of land, culture, and population some Native Americans today are experiencing symptoms of loss, which is what contributes to disproportionately higher rates of poverty, violence and substance abuse. This is what the ICWA was intended to protect children from in the first place

Is the Indian Child Welfare Act an over correction, a way to remedy past wrongs that’s become a wrong itself? It’s unclear. Decades of forced assimilation policies have left many Native Americans justifiably weary of their youth being removed from their homes. The looming threat of cultural genocide, even a perceived threat, should be a very real concern for state policymakers. That should be reason enough for legislators, judges and social workers to consider new approaches to protecting indigenous youth while ensuring the protection of their cultural identity.

Joe Eggers is a 2016 graduate of the University of Minnesota. His master’s thesis explored the cultural genocide of indigenous people through the boarding school system.