The George & Irina Schaeffer CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF GENOCIDE, HUMAN RIGHTS, & CONFLICT PREVENTION
As we study mass violence and genocide, horror can overwhelm any attempt to understand the causes; after all, what could possibly explain these acts of hate and destruction? This Center operates on the belief that only by unearthing the roots of such conflict can we work towards a more sustained, and sustainable, peace. To this end, it provides funding for projects that cover any number of topics and perspectives, with a special focus on faculty-student mentored research. Examples of such work include graduate student Rachel Fallon’s '16 exploration of creativity during genocide, in her project “Art Against War and Genocide”; graduate student Shiri Salehin’s '16 analysis of France’s relationship to the Holocaust in “Memorialization of the Shoah in France”; and graduate student Stefanie Kundakjian's '16 study of the gaps in literature about the Armenian genocide in "Armenian Genocide: The Fate of Armenian
Women and Children During and Right After the Genocide". The Center’s commitment to original research has been reinforced by its status as France’s first host of the complete Visual History Archives of the USC Shoah Foundation, a collection of over 53,000 testimonies from survivors and witnesses to the Shoah, and the Armenian, Rwandan, and Nanjing genocides. In addition, the Center supports the embedding of such research and exploration into the AUP curriculum, generating new courses, study trips, and learning experiences for our students. By making this resource available to professors, students, and researchers both inside and outside of AUP, the Center can more effectively aid those dedicating their efforts towards exposure of mass hatred’s origins and its prevention. The Center has already hosted an impressive array of events. In Spring 2016, it
hosted a screening of Pierre Sauvage’s documentary Weapons of the Spirit, followed by a lecture. Both film and discussion revolved around the resistance efforts of French villagers in Chambonsur-Lignon during World War II; its inhabitants hid Jews in their homes, forged ration and identification cards for them, and led them to the safety of Switzerland, at great risk to their own lives. It’s now estimated that over 1000 Jews were saved as a direct result of their courage. This coming fall, at the Center’s formal inauguration on October 21-22, the Center will hold an advance screening of The Uncondemned, a documentary about the first conviction—its case argued successfully before the International Criminal Tribunal—of rape as a crime of genocide. The screening will be followed the next day by a prestigious international conference of scholars, lawyers and jurists debating “Legal Legacies of Genocide: From Nuremberg to the International Criminal Court.” 27