Teaching about Genocide in the 20th and 21st Centuries: A Conference for Teachers

Speakers at the conference

Biographies of speakers at the Teaching about Genocide conference at Yale, February 1-2, 2008

Joyce Apsel is a Master Teacher in Humanities at New York University where she teaches Social Foundations and sophomore seminars on genocide, human rights and peace studies. Dr. Apsel is the Founder and Director of Rights Works International, a not-for-profit human rights education project. She introduces human rights education into classrooms and trains teachers to introduce the subject as part of the curriculum. She is NGO/DPI representative to the United Nations for the International Network of Peace Museums and on the executive board of the Institute for the Study of Genocide. She served as President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (2001-2003). She lectures and writes on issues of genocide, peace and human rights and is co-editor of Teaching about Genocide (3rd ed. 2003), editor of Teaching about Human Rights (2005) and Darfur: Genocide Before our Eyes (2005)

Jasmina Besirevic’s sociology dissertation for Yale University on ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian city of Banja Luka focuses on the emergence of a Bosnian Muslim refugee community. Her teaching and research interests include genocide and ethnic conflict, identity and nationalism. Her current work focuses on the Bosnian Muslim identity and disintegration of former Yugoslavia. She has presented papers on the sociology of genocide at a number of professional meetings and has been invited to speak at international conferences both at Yale and abroad. She is currently teaching an undergraduate seminar in sociology at Yale on Genocide and Ethnic Conflict.

Deborah Dwork is the Rose Professor of Holocaust History and the Director of the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University is the author of or contributor to numerous books on the Holocaust, including Children with a Star (1991), Auschwitz: 1270 To the Present (co-authored with Robert Jan van Pelt, 1996) the definitive volume, Holocaust: A History(co-authored with Robert Jan van Pelt, 2002), Voices and Views: A History of the Holocaust (ed., 2005), The Poesie Album of Marianka Zadików in Theresienstadt (2008), and the forthcoming Flight from the Reich (also with Robert Jan van Pelt). She is the founding director of the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, dedicated to teaching, research, education and scholarship about the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, and other genocides worldwide. Professor Dwork has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies.

Helen Fein is Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Genocide and an Associate of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. She is the author of numerous books and monographs on genocide and collective violence, including prize winning works, Accounting for Genocide (1979), Genocide: A Sociological Perspective (1993) and Human Rights and Wrongs: Slavery, Terror, and Genocide (2007). She was a founder and first President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

Henry Greenbaum was born in Starachowice, Poland, on April 1, 1928, the youngest of nine children. His father passed away before World War II began. In 1939, when he was twelve years old, he and his family were sent to the ghetto in their town. They stayed in the ghetto until October of 1942 when a selection was made. He and three of his sisters were chosen to work in the slave labor camp in their town; Henry worked in a munitions factory producing springs. In 1943, Henry and his sister Faiga tried to escape from the camp. Henry was shot in the head and his sister was killed. In 1943, Henry was sent to Auschwitz and placed in the Buna Monowitz satellite camp. There he worked for the I.G. Farben Company. He was sent to the concentration camp of Flossenburg in Germany. After a four month death march, Henry was liberated in Germany on April 25, 1945. He moved to the United States in 1946, joining his sister there. Only Henry, his two brothers and sister survived the Holocaust.

Etelle Higonnet is an international human rights lawyer based in New York. Most recently, she was with Human Rights Watch where she worked as a Bernstein Fellow, documenting sexual violence in Côte d'Ivoire during that country's continuing civil war. She is the author of My Heart is Cut: Sexual Violence by Rebels and Pro-Government Forces in Côte d'Ivoire (2007) and numerous other reports. She edited a volume entitled "Quiet Genocide" about the Guatemalan genocide as a project of Yale University's Genocide Studies Program. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, she was Senior Research Fellow and General Project Coordinator at De Paul University's International Human Rights Law Institute, where she authored or co-authored four publications on transitional justice issues, including genocide and ethnic cleansing. She has also worked for Guatemala's National Coordinating Office on Refugees and Displaced, as well as the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, the Royal Cambodian Government Task Force for the Extraordinary Chambers, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the Rencontre Africaine pour la Défense des Droits de l'Homme.

Adam Jones is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia at Okanagan. Prior to that, he was Research Fellow for 2005-07 in the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, and taught for five years at the CIDE research institute in Mexico City. He is editor of several books on genocide: Gendercide and Genocide (2004) and Genocide, War Crimes & the West (2004). Most recently he published Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction (2006). He has also published two books on the mass media and political transition. His scholarly articles have appeared in Review of International Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Journal of Genocide Research, Journal of Human Rights, and other publications. He is executive director of Gendercide Watch, a web-based educational initiative that confronts gender-selective atrocities against men and women worldwide.

Ben Kiernan is Whitney Griswold Professor of History, Professor of International and Area Studies, and Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University. He is the author of Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur 2007), Genocide and Resistance in Southeast Asia: Documentation, Denial and Justice in Cambodia and East Timor (2007), How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930-1975(1985, 2004), Cambodia: The Eastern Zone Massacres(1986), The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979 (1996, 2002), and Le Génocide au Cambodge, 1975-1979: Race, idéologie, et pouvoir (1998). He is the co-author of Khmers Rouges ! Matériaux pour l'histoire du communisme au Cambodge (1981), Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea, 1942-1981(1982), and Cambodge: Histoire et enjeux (1986), and has published numerous articles on Southeast Asia and the history of genocide. He is a member of the editorial boards of Critical Asian Studies, Human Rights Review, Genocide Studies and Prevention, Zeitschrift für Genozidforschung, and the Journal of Genocide Research. Ben was founding Director of the Cambodian Genocide Program 1994-99) and Convenor of the Yale East Timor Project 2000-02). Kiernan's edited collection Conflict and Change in Cambodia won the Critical Asian Studies Prize for 2002, and was republished as a book in 2006. He is also the editor of Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge, the United Nations, and the International Community 1993), and Burchett: Reporting the Other Side of the World, 1939-1983 1986), and co-editor of Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea 1983), Pol Pot Plans the Future: Confidential Leadership Documents from Democratic Kampuchea, 1976-1977 1988), and The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective 2003).

Catharine Newbury is Professor of Government at Smith College , and Five College Professor of Government and African Studies. Her research interests include ethnicity and the state in Africa, democratization, the politics of peasants and women, and the politics of violence in Francophone Central Africa. She is the author of The Cohesion of Oppression: Clientship and Ethnicity in Rwanda, and many articles on multiple aspects of Central African political processes. At Smith, Newbury teaches courses on African politics, women and politics in Africa, the Rwanda genocide in comparative perspective, and the politics of development. She is currently Director of the Five College African Scholars Program, a fellowship program that brings African scholars to the Five Colleges for research and writing.

Simon Payaslian is Charles K. and Elisabeth M. Kenosian Professor in Modern Armenian History and Literature at Boston University. Prior to joining the faculty at Boston University, Dr. Payaslian was Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marian Mugar Professor of Armenian Genocide Studies and Modern Armenian History at Clark University. He has published several books on Armenian history, including The Armenian Genocide, 1915-1923: A Handbook for Students and Teachers (2001), United States Policy Toward the Armenian Question and the Armenian Genocide (2005), and History of Armenia: From the Origins to the Present(2007).

Socheata Poeuv, a 2007 Echoing Green Fellow and a Visiting Fellow at the Yale University Genocide Studies Program at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, made her filmmaking debut with the feature documentary New Year Baby which won the 'Movies That Matter' human rights cinema award (an Amnesty International initiative) on its premiere at the 2006 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. New Year Baby is also slated for national PBS broadcast on Independent Lens in 2008. She left NBC News Dateline in 2007 and previously was on staff with ABC News World News Tonight Weekend and NBC News TODAY. She also co-founded Broken English Productions in New York City and has written for City Limits Magazine, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, DisOriented and the Open Society Justice Initiative. Her newest project is creating Khmer Legacies, a visual history project with the goal of videotaping 10,000 Cambodian genocide survivors while interviewed by their children.

Eric Reeves is Professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College. He has spent the past eight years working full-time as a Sudan researcher and analyst, publishing extensively both in the US and internationally. He has testified several times before the Congress, has lectured widely in academic settings, and has served as a consultant to a number of human rights and humanitarian organizations operating in Sudan. Working independently, he has written on all aspects of Sudan's recent history. His book about Darfur, A Long Day's Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide, was published in 2007. He is also at work on a longer-range project surveying the international response to ongoing war and human destruction in Sudan over the past 18 years.

Joanne W. Rudof has been Archivist of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University since 1990. From 1984-1990, she served as Project Manager of the Archive, and before that she taught in synagogue schools and held several volunteer positions dealing with the Holocaust and Holocaust education on the local, state, and national levels. At Yale, she is known as organizer and presenter at a number of significant conferences related to the Holocaust, Genocide Studies, and education and documentation about these topics. These events have attracted audiences from numerous parts of the world. She has served in professional capacities for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Association of Moving Image Archivists, among others, and has consulted for a number of organizations in her area of expertise.

Susannah Sirkin is Deputy Director for International Policy of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a national organization that mobilizes health professionals to advance the health and dignity of all people through action that promotes respect for, protection of and fulfillment of human rights. She has held this position since 1987 when she joined the organization's staff shortly after its founding. Previously, she was Director of Membership Programs for Amnesty International USA. Sirkin has organized health and human rights investigations to dozens of countries, including recent documentation of genocide and systematic rape in Darfur, Sudan, PHR's exhumations of mass graves in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda for the International Criminal Tribunals, investigations into consequences of human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law in, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Haiti, India, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Kosovo, Kuwait, Somalia, Turkey, and the US among others. She has worked on studies of sexual violence in Bosnia, Sierra Leone, and Thailand. She has authored and edited numerous reports and articles on the medical consequences of human rights violations, physical evidence of human rights abuses, and physician complicity in violations. Ms. Sirkin co-developed and directed the first post-graduate course in medicine and human rights initiated at Harvard Medical School in 1992. Sirkin is a strategist in PHR’s Health Action AIDS campaign, and in 2004, launched its Uganda project which supports the development of a Ugandan health professional campaign for effective prevention and treatment. PHR’s is currently conducting surveys in several countries to research women and girls’ unique vulnerabilities to HIV-AIDS. Sirkin also served from 1992-2001 for PHR as a member of the Coordination Committee of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

Timothy Snyder is professor and director of graduate studies in the history department at Yale University. He is the author of Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (1998); The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (2003); Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (2005); and The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke (2008). He is also the co-editor of Wall Around the West: State Power and Immigration Controls in Europe and North America (2001). He is currently at work on a history of political atrocity in Eastern Europe from 1933 to 1953, and a family history of nationalism.