Last night (April 11th) Dr. Gregory Stanton, President of Genocide Watch, gave a talk about genocide prevention at the Knight Law Center. Though I expected the atmosphere of the room to be heavy and intense, it was instead piquing with curiosity and admiration. Attendees were in the company of an individual with a history of experience and a great deal of authority on the subject of genocide. As Dr. Stanton discussed, the topic of genocide is not often received with enthusiasm. It is depressing and daunting for most to discuss because we do not fully understand how to make sense of its occurrence in humanity. However, I was given the overall impression that the audience was more than willing to contemplate the “why” of genocide. While I was expecting to leave Dr. Stanton’s discussion feeling overwhelmed, instead I left with a sense of inspiration to learn more about the contributions I could make to work against genocide.
Before preventing genocide, one must first define genocide and be knowledgeable about its history. Dr. Stanton spoke to many occurrences of genocides in human history, including the atrocities of the Nazi regime, murders in Sudan, and denial of deaths in Rwanda by the United Nations. He also spoke to modern occurrences of genocide, such as the mass murders occurring in Syria. Dr. Stanton defined genocide and gave further reasoning as to why and how genocide comes into being. While these horrible circumstances and deaths came as a result of a variety of factors, Dr. Stanton made sure to note that there were some specific authorities responsible. He implicated not only local leaders of the regions discussed, but also larger bureaucracies such as the United Nations. By doing this, Dr. Stanton managed to preserve the issue of genocide as a global problem and not necessarily region-specific. This enabled the audience to further see genocide as a pressing topic that warrants further discussion.
I was impressed by the balance Dr. Stanton maintained between not only informing and promoting activism, but also in presenting the reality of genocide. His utilization of images depicting internment camps, crematoriums, and mass graves forced the audience to consider the darker side of humanity. The images used by Dr. Stanton were burned into the minds of attendees as constant reminders that genocide does exist and needs to be stopped.
Some efforts have been taken to prevent genocide within the local community. Dr. Stanton spoke to the genocide prevention initiative that is undergoing development here in Oregon and recognized the work of Dr. Paul Slovic. Dr. Slovic came to speak with CGO last term about neutrality in the face of genocide as a societal problem. Dr. Slovic himself was in attendance of Wednesday night’s talk and helped to take questions from the audience. Some of the questions asked covered topics such as America’s judicial system, Japanese internment camps, and the treatment of immigrants as “illegal aliens” in America. I thought they were all extremely relevant to the topic at hand and gave fresh looks of how genocide is viewed in our own society. Overall, I found that Dr. Stanton’s talk was intellectually invigorating. I look forward to hearing more from both he and Dr. Slovic.