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The Past, Present, and Future of the Rohingya Crisis

Speakers: Tun Khin (President Burmese Rohingya Organization UK), John Knaus (Associate Director for Asia, National Endowment for Democracy), Debbie Stothard (Director of Altsean-Burma and Secretary General of International Federation for Human Rights) and Matt Wells (Amnesty International Senior Crisis Advisor) Who are the Rohingya? And why do so many people in Burma/Myanmar regard them as […]

Justifying Genocide – Germany’s Entangled History with the Armenian Genocide and its Repercussions

Speaker: Stefan Ihrig (Professor Of History At The University Of Haifa). For Germany, the Armenian Genocide did not take place “far away in Turkey.” It was something very close to home. Relations between the German empire and the Ottoman Empire had been close since the 1890s. Since then Germany had become accustomed to excuse violence […]

Fourth International Graduate Students’ Conference

Speaker: Victoria Sanford, Professor And Chair Of Anthropology, And Founding Director Of The Center For Human Rights And Peace Studies, Lehman College, City University Of New York. In cooperation with the Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, this conference provided a forum for advanced doctoral students and early post-docs to present […]

Anthropological Methods for Documenting Human Rights Violations and Genocide

Speaker: Victoria Sanford (Anthropology Professor And Founding Director Of The Center For Human Rights And Peace Studies, Lehman College) Drawing on 25 years of experience investigating human rights violation and genocide in Guatemala, Sanford will discuss the theory and practice of forensic exhumations, victim identification, archival and testimonial research and their interplay in legal processes […]

Killing Orders – The Smoking Gun behind the Armenian Genocide

Speaker: Professor Taner Akçam, Robert Aram And Marianne Kaloosdian And Stephen And Marian Mugar Chair In Armenian Genocide Studies, Clark University Clark University historian Taner Akçam has made landmark discoveries that prove the Ottoman government’s central role in planning the Armenian genocide. Despite decades of scholarly research, the scarcity of direct evidence has allowed Turkey […]

Stalin’s Forced Labor Camps: A Re-examination

Speaker: Golfo Alexopoulos (Professor Of History, University Of South Florida, Tampa And Director Of The USF Institute On Russia) Alexopoulos will discuss her new book, Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin’s Gulag, which is the first scholarly work devoted to health and medicine in Stalin’s forced labor camps. Drawing upon recently declassified Gulag archives, the book […]

Soldiers for Christ in Hitler’s Germany: The Salvation Army and the Nazi State

Speaker: Rebecca Carter-Chand (Visiting Assistant Professor, Strassler Center For Holocaust And Genocide Studies, Clark University) In the 1930’s, the Salvation Army operated around the world. As in other countries, the German branch of this Protestant organization offered social services and a spiritual community for Germany’s urban poor and working classes, as well as large-scale humanitarian […]

The Ottoman Empire through the Lens of the American Civil War: Slavery and the 1890s’ Armenian Massacres in Comparative Perspective

Speaker: Owen Miller (Postdoctoral Fellow, Union College) In the 1890s, a series of massacres targeted Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Two American Civil War veterans living in Istanbul reported on the killings, both comparing it to the violence against African Americans in their native country. One, a former Confederate general, thought reports of the Armenian […]

Man or Monster? The Trial of a Khmer Rouge Torturer

Speaker: Alex Hinton, Director Of The Center For The Study Of Genocide And Human Rights, And Professor Of Anthropology And Global Affairs, Rutgers University. During the Khmer Rouge’s brutal reign in Cambodia (mid- to late-1970s), a former math teacher named Duch served as the commandant of the S-21 security center, where as many as 20,000 […]

Conference: Children and Mass Violence

Attar’s lecture is part of a two-day conference that will explore the traumatic impact of mass violence on the most vulnerable segment of society-children and youth. Experts will examine the destructive strategies and methods of the perpetrators, the suffering of the victims, their agency, their coping mechanisms, and the lasting injuries of those who survived. […]

Stories from Syria’s Children: Growing up in the Age of Genocide and Displacement

Speaker: Lina Sergie Attar, Karam Foundation. What does “home” mean to a child growing up as a refugee? What kind of future do we envision for the millions of people fleeing war, searching for sanctuary, and longing to belong? In this personal talk about the Syrian humanitarian crisis and its devastating toll on children, Attar […]