Students Act to Halt Atrocities

U.S. foreign policymakers aren’t the only ones with renewed interest in halting genocide.

Over the past year, “a tremendous flowering” of student-initiated activities around genocide prevention has taken place at Lewis & Clark, says Associate Professor of History Matt Levinger. Students have organized appearances and flocked to hear speakers such as 81-year-old Holocaust survivor Renée Firestone, raised $3,000 in a single day to aid conflict-stricken Sudan, and traveled to Africa in search of answers to why genocide happens and how to stop it.

“In the course of our lifetime we’ve seen Bosnia, Rwanda, and now Sudan,” says Sasha Stortz ’07, organizer of the campus affiliate of Students Taking Action Now: Darfur, or STAND, a national student group supported by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Genocide has been in the news for much of our lives.”

Stortz, a Jew whose grandfather liberated Nazi concentration camps during World War II, adds that many students were moved by the recently acclaimed film Hotel Rwandaand the man who inspired the movie, hotelier Paul Rusesabagina. He delivered a standing-room-only speech on campus in March—yet another student run event, this time organized by international affairs major Ashley Smith ’06.

Levinger’s scholarly focus on genocide prevention also has fueled interest. And his role at the new Academy for Genocide Prevention has given several students the chance to aid its cause.

Nicolette Boehland ’05 and Michael Graham ’06 spent a month assembling briefing papers on conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo for an April roundtable in Washington, D.C. Levinger says the situation summary and related resource materials elicited enthusiastic reviews from attendees from the United Nations, National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency, and other government and humanitarian groups. In fact, the State Department’s desk officer for Burundi told Levinger he has put the binder on his bookshelf as an authoritative reference work.

Both students say getting a handle on the ever-changing Congolese political situation was a challenge, but was well worth the experience. “(Levinger) doesn’t want to just discuss genocide prevention, he wants to be a part of what’s going on now,” says Boehland, an international affairs major. “That’s inspiring, and it makes me want to keep studying the issue.”

Graham was inspired by Romeo Dallaire, the commander of U.N. forces in Rwanda who tried heroically to curb the slaughter of nearly 1 million ethnic Tutsis. Graham spent last summer in Rwanda filming interviews for an upcoming documentary on reconciliation, arranged Dallaire’s November 2004 campus visit, and has been raising funds that will enable a Rwandan to study at Lewis & Clark next year. “As Matt Levinger says, you put a toe in the water, and the river will suck you in,” says Graham.

That aphorism also applies to Sam Eberhart ’05. A year after taking Levinger’s Holocaust course, he traveled to Tanzania to interview judges and lawyers at the International Criminal Tribunal, where organizers of the Rwandan massacre were on trial. Today he’s in Washington, D.C., helping develop academy curricula on U.S. foreign policy during the Rwandan affair. “To address genocide prevention,” says Eberhart, “we need to reassess past situations and fully understand their complexities.”

Levinger says he’s excited and impressed by the “sophisticated work” of Lewis & Clark students. They, too, feel as Levinger did when he started his scholarly inquiry into forestalling atrocities: Studying the history of genocide, he says, “carries with it an imperative to act on that knowledge.”