On CAMPUS
Dr. Samantha Power discusses genocide at the new Holocaust Resource Center lecture series that honors Dr. Frederick Schweitzer, professor emeritus of history.
Holocaust Resource Center Features Pulitzer Prize Winner at new Lecture Series t he Ma Nhat t a N Co lleg e Holocaust Resource Center presented the first lecture of its new Frederick M. Schweitzer Lecture Series this past October titled Can Genocide Be Stopped? U.S. Foreign Policy in an Age of Terror. It featured Dr. Samantha Power, a professor of practice of global leadership and public policy at Harvard University and a 2003 Pulitzer Prize winner. Power described four seminal dates in recent history. First, she discussed April 21, 1994 as the culmination of a two-and-a-half week killing spree during which 100,000-300,000 people were murdered in the Rwandan Genocide. She posed this question to her audience: “How is it that 50 years after the Holocaust there is so little being said about this [genocide] in Congress?” Next, she identified the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001 as an experience that enabled young Americans to identify with the Rwandan Genocide. She came back to the Rwandan Genocide with the third date, April 6, 2004, which commemorated its 10-year anniversary. That
April, the “endangered people movement” came into existence in the United States. “Young people drove this movement,” Power said. The final date that she mentioned was Nov. 4, 2008, the day of the presidential election that took place shortly after her lecture. Power noted it as the first time a black man would have the opportunity to be elected president. Power also gave a morning lecture session for students on the theme of genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. She compared this genocide to the overtly violent genocides that took place in Rwanda and under the Nazis and discussed strategies to stop it.
Catholic Relief Services Reports on Conflict in Uganda f o r t h e pa s t 2 0 yea r s , a little-publicized conflict has ravaged the African nation of Uganda, where thousands of children have been abducted and two million people have been displaced. Sister Pauline Silver Acayo, an Ugandan native and Catholic Relief Services (CRS) peacebuilding officer in the country, gave a startling account of the crisis for her lecture Peacebuilding in Africa: Healing Former Child Soldiers in October. Sr. Acayo described how the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a group of rebels who started the war to overthrow the Ugandan government, mindlessly kill fellow citizens and rape women. The rebels abduct boys who are forced to become child soldiers or else have their hands, ears or noses cut off. In the face of violence, CRS has enrolled more than 5,000 children in peace clubs at schools. They learn about conflict resolution, leadership skills and human rights in an effort to help rescued child soldiers rejoin society. Campus ministry and social action, National Society of Black Engineers, Association for Black Culture and Catholic Relief Services sponsored the talk.
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