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Course teaches lessons in genocide prevention

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  • Course teaches lessons in genocide prevention

    New Jersey Jewish Standard, NJ
    June 2 2006

    Course teaches lessons in genocide prevention


    Josh Lipowsky


    View all articles by Josh Lipowsky A group of scholars has been
    dissecting the root-causes of genocide so that future violence
    against whole peoples, like the current slaughter in the Sudan, might
    be avoided.

    In February, two professors and an activist incorporated the
    International Academy for Genocide Prevention, building on a
    graduate-level course at Columbia University's Center for
    International Conflict Resolution, the City College of New York, and
    a slew of European universities.

    The course, which will be taught for the third time in the spring of
    2007, teaches students how to recognize genocide rather than
    superficially studying genocides.

    "The focus of our organization is to act before there's violence,"
    said Henry Huttenbach, a participating distinguished professor at the
    CCNY and one of the IACGP founders and directors. "When there's
    [already] violence, you don't prevent. The best you can do is stop,
    and [then] it becomes too late."

    The academy was the brainchild of Huttenbach, Andrea Bartoli, the
    director of Columbia's Center for International Conflict Resolution,
    and Wayne resident Eric Mayer, a social activist with a history of
    championing human rights. While it is housed at Columbia, it is a
    collaboration that goes beyond the campus. Mayer had been working on
    the project for three years, meeting with high-level international
    leaders, including Mikail Gorbachev, the former president of Poland,
    and representatives of the Vatican. Then he met Bartoli and
    Huttenbach. They designed the graduate course as a way to reach the
    most people.

    "The credit must go to Bartoli and Huttenbach," said Mayer, a
    Holocaust survivor. "It's a way to repay a debt for the gentile
    people who at the risk of their lives, saved mine during World War
    II."

    But the Holocaust will not be the focus of the course or the
    academy's mission. Hitler's rise to power and the Holocaust will
    certainly be used as examples but within the context of
    deconstructing how a genocide can occur.

    "Hitler didn't have the masses [in the beginning]," Mayer said. "He
    started one at a time and then got the masses. The only vaccination
    is education."

    In Germany, Mayer said, it became acceptable to be anti-Semitic. So
    the first goal of the academy is "to immunize people against
    prejudice." People need to understand that there are other societies
    with different views, cultures, and religions, Mayer said.

    The next step will be to increase the interaction between people of
    different backgrounds who can put aside their differences. This is
    not to take away from ethnic pride, Mayer stressed, but to increase
    pride in our common connection as human beings.

    The course uses four genocides as its base: the Holocaust, the
    Armenian genocide, Rwanda, and Cambodia. The more the students
    understand the background, the better position they will be in to
    prevent a crisis, Huttenbach said.

    Bartoli likened genocide prevention to fire prevention. There did not
    used to be fire brigades and fire prevention regimens, but these have
    helped to save lives. He hopes the academy's genocide education will
    have the same effect.
    In November, the academy will sponsor a symposium at Columbia for
    state representatives and other government officials. Genocide,
    Bartoli said, is not possible without "the collusion or the active
    participation" of government, so the conference will aim to create an
    effective collective response within government, and will feature
    speakers from across the globe, including, Mayer hopes, the president
    of Rwanda.

    "We have to learn many lessons from the past," Bartoli said. "It is,
    unfortunately, way too easy for a relatively small number of people
    to kill an extraordinarily large number of people. The possibility of
    genocide increases when bystanders do not feel responsible for what
    happens in the system."

    A German corporation, which Mayer would not identify, has also
    approached the academy about teaching its course to the international
    staffs of corporations.

    "The seed of genocide is economic," Mayer said. "It is very
    significant because they're willing to take the lead in this."

    Mayer recalled a memory from his boyhood in Germany. In 1937, his
    father, who fought in the German cavalry in World War I, went to a
    veterans meeting where he told his compatriots to get rid of "that
    clown," Hitler. Mayer's father, who was arrested three times and
    later killed in one of the camps, is the inspiration for his work in
    teaching about genocide and the dangers of hate.

    "It is important to [teach] rather than to build memorials," he said.
    "My father would be happy if [donors] spent money on teaching people
    rather than putting up another stone."

    For more information on the academy, its class, or the upcoming
    symposium, visit www.sipa.columbia.edu/cicr.

    http://www.jstandard.com/articles/1120/1/Course-t eaches-lessons-in-genocide-prevention
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