IGAAR

2nd Annual IGAAR Conference Announcement

11/1/2011 8:14:52 PM

Description: http://nsunews.nova.edu/shss-host-genocide-conference-igaar-november-12-2011/

Safeer Bhatti: IGAAR 2011-2012 Student President: Spreading Awareness

9/10/2011 8:11:01 AM

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JGAAR Vol1 E-Version ISSN: 2152-1891

4/13/2011 8:11:14 PM

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JGAAR: The Journal of Genocide Awareness and Applied Research Unboxing

4/12/2011 2:58:46 PM

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Margaret Ajemian Ahnert Speaks with My Students

12/18/2010 10:37:04 AM

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Call for Papers: International workshop at the University of Southern California

11/1/2010 12:37:50 PM

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CALL FOR PAPERS: Resisting the Path to Genocide: The Case of States and Societies

International workshop at the University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA, May 5-7, 2011

The newly established interdisciplinary research cluster “Resisting
the Path to Genocide” at the University of Southern California, Los
Angeles, addresses the fundamental question of what enables people to
oppose or resist racist ideologies, state discrimination practices, or
the active participation in mass atrocities in three steps, focusing
consecutively on societies, groups, and individuals (for more details,
visit college.usc.edu/2020-resistance).

For the first of three international workshops, which will take place
at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles May 5-7, 2011,
we now seek applications from scholars of any discipline for papers
about the question, what prevents states and societies from pursuing
genocidal policies and practices?

We appreciate case studies (ranging from colonial genocides of the
19th century to contemporary examples) as well as comparative work on
genocidal states and societies, but also on countries which did not
turn genocidal, such as South Africa.

What kind of conditions may prevent societies from tipping into
murderous actions? Are institutions or organizations (inside and
outside of a country) identifiable which resist genocidal tendencies?
We also encourage counterfactual research, e.g. about alternatives
which existed but were not chosen in genocidal states as Nazi Germany,
Guatemala and others. Since the aim of the cluster is to enhance our
understanding how to resist genocidal processes, we also seek
contributions which will discuss opposition and resistance in a
theoretical way.

The University of Southern California provides unique research
resources: the Shoah Foundation Institute Archive with more than
52,000 interviews on the Holocaust as well as on other genocides, The
Lion Feuchtwanger collection and a new Holocaust studies collection.

Please send a CV and a one-page abstract of the proposed paper before
November 30th, 2010 to gruner@usc.edu

Wolf Gruner
Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies
Professor of History
Department of History
SOS Room 262
3520 Trousdale Pkwy
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0034

IGAAR Research Promoted

10/26/2010 10:04:09 AM

Description: IGAAR was featured in Horizons Magazine. Click here to read the e-version of the article.

Dr. Sargon Donabed Joins IGAAR Advisory Board

8/25/2010 10:18:38 AM

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IGAAR is pleased to announce that Dr. Sargon Donabed has joined our advisory board.

Dr. Sargon Donabed is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and American Studies at Roger Williams University. He is the author of The Assyrians of Eastern Massachusetts, which can be purchased from Amazon by clicking the image above. Dr. Donabed is currently working on a book for IB Tauris publishing tentatively titled: Iraq and the Assyrian Unimagining: Illuminating Scaled Suffering and a Hierarchy of Genocide from Simele to Anfal. We welcome Dr. Donabed to our advisory board!

Foundations of Genocide Lecture

8/1/2010 1:39:35 AM

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New Genocide Course at Nova Southeastern University

6/22/2010 1:05:04 AM

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I am pleased to announce that this fall I will be teaching the first class in Genocide Studies and Prevention ever offered at Nova Southeastern University. The class, CARM/D 6630, Foundations of Genocide, is a survey of the causes, forms, and nature of genocide. The course addresses the complexities in differentiating human rights violations and crimes against humanity, from genocide and government sponsored mass murder. The course will serve as an introduction to the theories and applied practices utilized in analyzing acts of genocide. Issues addressed throughout the course will include: eugenics and genocide, demographic purging, state sovereignty and genocide, genocide prevention and the forms of genocide. I have selected the following text as required readings for both my online and residential students:

Margaret A. Ahnert joins IGAAR's Advisory Board

6/16/2010 11:34:31 AM

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IGAAR is pleased to announce that Margaret A. Ahnert has joined our advisory board.

MARGARET AHNERT was born in New York City. Growing up, she listened to her mother’s stories about her own childhood during the Armenian Genocide in Turkey. She has an MFA from Goucher College and a BA from Goddard College, and is a graduate of the Barnes Foundation. She has pursued a variety of careers: producing television documentaries, lecturing as a docent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and teaching art appreciation through the Art Goes to School program in elementary schools. Ahnert holds a 100-ton master captain’s license and is an avid hunter and fisherwoman. The Knock at the Door is her first book.

“A frank and searing testimony.”
—Publishers Weekly

“The Knock at the Door is an inspired, beautifully written chronicle of one of the worst eras in human history. Had such books been written long ago, another Holocaust, which followed twenty-five years later, might never have happened.”
—ROBERT MORGENTHAU, District Attorney for New York County, grandson of Henry Morgenthau, Sr., United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I

“Margaret Ahnert has written an incredibly moving recollection of her mother's ordeal as a young girl during the Armenian Genocide in Turkey. Of all the books and articles I have read on this terrible era, her account rings true, perhaps because it issues from one source — the eyewitness memories of her ninety-eight-year-old mother. Read this book. You will cry, you will laugh. And you will know the truth.”
—BILL HENDERSON, Pushcart Press

“In The Knock at the Door, Ester's daughter has captured the haunting details of her mother's compelling story. The author invites us into her family circle, offering a fascinating glimpse of the Armenian culture and its painful history. Through the work of the author, we come to know Ester's wit, wisdom, and charm as they come to life on each page of this unforgettable story.”
—GOVERNOR HUGH L. CAREY

“In The Knock at the Door. Margaret Ahnert has skillfully recreated her mother’s traumatic battle to survive the Armenian Genocide in Turkey during World War I. The story, pieced together with notes from conversations and tape recordings of her mother, is observed with great sensitivity through her mother’s eyes in a way that is genuine and overwhelming in its controlled and contained narrative.”
— LEE GUTKIND, Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh

In 1915, Armenian Christians In Turkey were forced to convert to Islam, barred from speaking their language, and often driven out of their homes as the Turkish army embarked on a widespread campaign of intimidation and murder. In this riveting book, Margaret Ajemian Ahnert relates her mother Ester’s terrifying experiences as a young woman during this period of hatred and brutality.
At age fifteen, Ester was separated from her foster family during a forced march away from her birth town of Amasia. Though she faced unspeakable horrors at the hands of many she met on the road, and was forced into an abusive marriage against her will, she never lost her faith, quick wit, or ability to see the good in people. Eventually she escaped and made her way to America. Ahnert’s compelling account of her mother’s suffering is framed by an intimate portrait of her relationship with her ninety-eight-year-old mother. Easter’s inspiring stories, told lovingly by her daughter, will give you a window into the harrowing struggle of Armenians during a terrible period in human history.

IGAAR Joins the Campaign to End Genocide!

6/9/2010 11:17:21 PM

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I am deeply honored to announce that the Institute for Genocide Awareness and Applied Research (IGAAR) has been invited to join the Campaign to End Genocide, chaired by Genocide Watch. Here at IGAAR, we are dedicated to harnessing all available resources to promote awareness and intervene on behalf of those targeted for extermination. We have accomplished a lot in our first year, but recognize that the fight for human dignity can never stop. We must be relentless.

I end with this quote from the great Bob Marley:

"The people who are trying to make this world worse are not taking a day off. How can we?”

Hannibal Travis Publishes Book on Genocide in the Middle East

6/9/2010 1:40:41 AM

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I am pleased to announce that one of our advisory board members, Hannibal Travis, J.D. has recently published his book on genocide in the Middle East. Congratulations! The book is accessible at the link below.

Reviews:

This ambitious book in its research and coverage tells a sorry tale of mankind's inhumanity and intolerance over millennia of genocidal deeds and rhetoric. A fast-moving narrative reaches from biblical times to Darfur, describing tragic events accompanied by selective quotations from their participants and observers. Genocide may be a recently invented term, but its occurrences based on a variety of causes and reasons seem to have been a deep part of the human experience of group interactions. --Henry Steiner, Professor of Law, Emeritus, Harvard Law School, and co-author, International Human Rights in Context: Law, Politics, Morals

In Genocide in the Middle East, Hannibal Travis breaks new ground in genocide studies by unveiling the full panoply of genocidal processes in the Middle East and West Asia as no previous scholar has. But he does much more: in terms of its twentieth and twenty-first-century coverage, this is simply the most expansive, detailed, and up-to-date history of genocide we possess. --Adam Jones, Associate Professor, Political Science, University of British Columbia Okanagan, and author of Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction

Product Description:

"Genocide in the Middle East" describes the genocide of the Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; of the Kurds and other persons living under Saddam Hussein in northern Iraq in the late 1980s; and of the Dinka, Nuba, Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa peoples of Sudan from the 1970s to the present. It situates these crimes in their historical context, as outgrowths of intolerant religious traditions, imperialism and the rise of the nation-state, Cold War insurgencies and counterinsurgencies, and the global competition for resources and markets at the expense of indigenous peoples. This requires a more thorough investigation of the case law on genocide than has been attempted in the literature on genocide to date, including detailed accounts of the prosecutions of the leaders of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, of Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi officials after Operation Iraqi Freedom, and of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and other leaders of Sudan by the International Criminal Court. Finally, the book explores emerging problems of genocidal terrorism, cultural genocide, and structural genocide due to starvation, disease, and displacement.

The field of genocide studies has grown rapidly in recent years, fueled by interest in the Armenian genocide, the wars in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq, and the widespread massacres in southern Sudan and Darfur. While several comparative studies of the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and other genocides have been published, none of them focuses on genocide in the Middle East and North Africa since the nineteenth century. This book provides a comprehensive history of genocide in the broader Islamic world, with a particular focus on the twentieth century. It is of interest to general readers, undergraduates, graduate students, academics, journalists, and legal professionals, and will be useful as a text for courses on International Law, International Criminal Law, Law and Religion, Middle East Studies, International Relations, Public Policy, Criminal Justice, or World History.

The book can be purchased from Amazon at the link below:

The Congo War Resource

6/8/2010 10:13:13 PM

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I couldn’t think of a better way to start the IGAAR blog than with an attempt to raise awareness on the mass extermination of human life in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I was contact by Bob Hill, the docent of the Congo War Resource, at www.congowarresource.org and asked if I could spread awareness. Here are a few suggested videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gCuLuwoovk

They have a very extensive archive of resource information. Please spread the word and raise awareness on what is happening in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. For more information please visit: www.congowarresource.org.