The Yale Herald (New Heaven, CT, USA)
OCTOBER 5, 2007 VOL. XLIV, NO. 5
At first glance, there’s nothing exceptional about it—a modest office in the corner of Luce Hall. But when Benedict Kiernan, Whitney Griswold Professor of History, digs out the files—literally thousands of photocopied pages of Khmer propaganda, records, and diaries—the place suddenly comes to life. Many undergraduates may not even know it exists, but Yale’s Genocide Studies Program is instrumental in the study and analysis of atrocities worldwide. In the case of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Kiernan, the program’s director, has made significant contributions to the field. “In 1996, our Cambodian mission discovered over 100,000 pages of secret police files,” said Kiernan. The files included lists of names produced during torture sessions with execution orders at the bottom signed by Pol Pot.
According to Kiernan, the Yale Genocide Studies Program is a “research and policy oriented program” that documents the mass murder of civilians and tries to prevent recurrences. Affiliates of the project have produced ten books and 35 working papers since the Program’s inception. Kiernan himself released a new book last Friday, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur, which incorporated research done using the Program’s funds.
The organization was founded in 1994 as the “Center for Cambodian Genocide Studies,” but Professor Ben Kiernan expanded its mission and changed its name in 1998. The Program does not have any full time staff—in this way, it is a kind of extracurricular activity for faculty and graduate students—but it does count historians, sociologists, a professor of psychiatry, and “people from comparative literature, from English, from human rights programs, from genocide studies programs in the Northeast, [and] political science” amongst its members, said Kiernan. Beyond faculty, myriad graduate students from multiple Yale professional schools, Europe, and South America, whose research focuses on topics ranging from Native Americans to the Armenian Massacre, associate themselves with the project. The Genocide Studies Program also convenes in a weekly seminar in which a wide range of speakers comment on varied genocide-related topics. Interestingly, it is also affiliated with The Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies, Yale’s principal environmental research organization, which is interested in correlations between genocide and the environment. In fact, no other Yale research institute has so global a list of affiliates.
To Kiernan, genocide must be considered in both the short and long term. In the long term, it’s a familiar list: war, poverty, political and economic destabilization. In the short term, the individual decisions and goals of political groups, as well as blind hatred—usually directed against an ethnic group—tend to unleash the pent-up forces of economic and societal deprivation. Kiernan firmly ruled out popularly-held beliefs about religious, political, or ideological tendencies as the roots of genocide: “Every movement has its bad apples.”
Kiernan makes it clear that the Program’s research has helped the academic community realize that no single policy will stop genocide. The prospective killers must be persuaded that the costs of their crimes outweigh the perceived benefits. Sometimes, such as in Rwanda and Kosovo, killers are beyond reason—a common ailment amongst the typical mass-murderer—and military force is necessary to put and end to the atrocities. However, Kiernan was careful to mention that such action should only be a last resort, for often military force can spawn more problems than it solves. For instance, American military intervention in Cambodia in the ’60s is believed to have been instrumental in propelling the Khmer Rouge to power. The Khmer Rouge, of course, went on to kill somewhere between one and three million Cambodians. Thus, more focused and precise measures, such as economic sanctions, become a preferable alternative if there are signs that the perpetrators value money over life. Finally, prosecution through criminal proceedings “makes new information available and deters future perpetrators,” explains Kiernan.
Despite the many political debates surrounding genocide today, the Program’s fellows do not lobby or advocate specific policies in conjunction with their research. The Program approaches genocide as an historical, sociological, political, and scientific problem; policymaking implications are rarely considered. As for improving public knowledge about past atrocities not always understood as genocide, the GSP puts out myriad publications and has established missions in countries overseas with the goal of unearthing documents related to genocide. For instance, the GSP mission in Cambodia not only collected, translated, and published secret police documents, but was also set up in such a way that it now stands alone as an independent institution.
Such fostering of permanent growth in genocide studies may be the Program’s greatest contribution. According to Laura Saldivia, LAW ’10, a Law School doctoral student who was once a fellow for the GSP, the Program has helped “to bring together a remarkable diversity of scholars that has helped to entrench the discussion within the scholarly community” about an issue that was, until the mid-1990s, practically ignored in academia. Such an accomplishment is, without doubt, rare in any field.
At first glance, there’s nothing exceptional about it—a modest office in the corner of Luce Hall. But when Benedict Kiernan, Whitney Griswold Professor of History, digs out the files—literally thousands of photocopied pages of Khmer propaganda, records, and diaries—the place suddenly comes to life. Many undergraduates may not even know it exists, but Yale’s Genocide Studies Program is instrumental in the study and analysis of atrocities worldwide. In the case of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Kiernan, the program’s director, has made significant contributions to the field. “In 1996, our Cambodian mission discovered over 100,000 pages of secret police files,” said Kiernan. The files included lists of names produced during torture sessions with execution orders at the bottom signed by Pol Pot.
According to Kiernan, the Yale Genocide Studies Program is a “research and policy oriented program” that documents the mass murder of civilians and tries to prevent recurrences. Affiliates of the project have produced ten books and 35 working papers since the Program’s inception. Kiernan himself released a new book last Friday, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur, which incorporated research done using the Program’s funds.
The organization was founded in 1994 as the “Center for Cambodian Genocide Studies,” but Professor Ben Kiernan expanded its mission and changed its name in 1998. The Program does not have any full time staff—in this way, it is a kind of extracurricular activity for faculty and graduate students—but it does count historians, sociologists, a professor of psychiatry, and “people from comparative literature, from English, from human rights programs, from genocide studies programs in the Northeast, [and] political science” amongst its members, said Kiernan. Beyond faculty, myriad graduate students from multiple Yale professional schools, Europe, and South America, whose research focuses on topics ranging from Native Americans to the Armenian Massacre, associate themselves with the project. The Genocide Studies Program also convenes in a weekly seminar in which a wide range of speakers comment on varied genocide-related topics. Interestingly, it is also affiliated with The Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies, Yale’s principal environmental research organization, which is interested in correlations between genocide and the environment. In fact, no other Yale research institute has so global a list of affiliates.
To Kiernan, genocide must be considered in both the short and long term. In the long term, it’s a familiar list: war, poverty, political and economic destabilization. In the short term, the individual decisions and goals of political groups, as well as blind hatred—usually directed against an ethnic group—tend to unleash the pent-up forces of economic and societal deprivation. Kiernan firmly ruled out popularly-held beliefs about religious, political, or ideological tendencies as the roots of genocide: “Every movement has its bad apples.”
Kiernan makes it clear that the Program’s research has helped the academic community realize that no single policy will stop genocide. The prospective killers must be persuaded that the costs of their crimes outweigh the perceived benefits. Sometimes, such as in Rwanda and Kosovo, killers are beyond reason—a common ailment amongst the typical mass-murderer—and military force is necessary to put and end to the atrocities. However, Kiernan was careful to mention that such action should only be a last resort, for often military force can spawn more problems than it solves. For instance, American military intervention in Cambodia in the ’60s is believed to have been instrumental in propelling the Khmer Rouge to power. The Khmer Rouge, of course, went on to kill somewhere between one and three million Cambodians. Thus, more focused and precise measures, such as economic sanctions, become a preferable alternative if there are signs that the perpetrators value money over life. Finally, prosecution through criminal proceedings “makes new information available and deters future perpetrators,” explains Kiernan.
Despite the many political debates surrounding genocide today, the Program’s fellows do not lobby or advocate specific policies in conjunction with their research. The Program approaches genocide as an historical, sociological, political, and scientific problem; policymaking implications are rarely considered. As for improving public knowledge about past atrocities not always understood as genocide, the GSP puts out myriad publications and has established missions in countries overseas with the goal of unearthing documents related to genocide. For instance, the GSP mission in Cambodia not only collected, translated, and published secret police documents, but was also set up in such a way that it now stands alone as an independent institution.
Such fostering of permanent growth in genocide studies may be the Program’s greatest contribution. According to Laura Saldivia, LAW ’10, a Law School doctoral student who was once a fellow for the GSP, the Program has helped “to bring together a remarkable diversity of scholars that has helped to entrench the discussion within the scholarly community” about an issue that was, until the mid-1990s, practically ignored in academia. Such an accomplishment is, without doubt, rare in any field.
According to Kiernan, the Yale Genocide Studies Program is a “research and policy oriented program” that documents the mass murder of civilians and tries to prevent recurrences. Affiliates of the project have produced ten books and 35 working papers since the Program’s inception. Kiernan himself released a new book last Friday, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur, which incorporated research done using the Program’s funds.
The organization was founded in 1994 as the “Center for Cambodian Genocide Studies,” but Professor Ben Kiernan expanded its mission and changed its name in 1998. The Program does not have any full time staff—in this way, it is a kind of extracurricular activity for faculty and graduate students—but it does count historians, sociologists, a professor of psychiatry, and “people from comparative literature, from English, from human rights programs, from genocide studies programs in the Northeast, [and] political science” amongst its members, said Kiernan. Beyond faculty, myriad graduate students from multiple Yale professional schools, Europe, and South America, whose research focuses on topics ranging from Native Americans to the Armenian Massacre, associate themselves with the project. The Genocide Studies Program also convenes in a weekly seminar in which a wide range of speakers comment on varied genocide-related topics. Interestingly, it is also affiliated with The Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies, Yale’s principal environmental research organization, which is interested in correlations between genocide and the environment. In fact, no other Yale research institute has so global a list of affiliates.
To Kiernan, genocide must be considered in both the short and long term. In the long term, it’s a familiar list: war, poverty, political and economic destabilization. In the short term, the individual decisions and goals of political groups, as well as blind hatred—usually directed against an ethnic group—tend to unleash the pent-up forces of economic and societal deprivation. Kiernan firmly ruled out popularly-held beliefs about religious, political, or ideological tendencies as the roots of genocide: “Every movement has its bad apples.”
Kiernan makes it clear that the Program’s research has helped the academic community realize that no single policy will stop genocide. The prospective killers must be persuaded that the costs of their crimes outweigh the perceived benefits. Sometimes, such as in Rwanda and Kosovo, killers are beyond reason—a common ailment amongst the typical mass-murderer—and military force is necessary to put and end to the atrocities. However, Kiernan was careful to mention that such action should only be a last resort, for often military force can spawn more problems than it solves. For instance, American military intervention in Cambodia in the ’60s is believed to have been instrumental in propelling the Khmer Rouge to power. The Khmer Rouge, of course, went on to kill somewhere between one and three million Cambodians. Thus, more focused and precise measures, such as economic sanctions, become a preferable alternative if there are signs that the perpetrators value money over life. Finally, prosecution through criminal proceedings “makes new information available and deters future perpetrators,” explains Kiernan.
Despite the many political debates surrounding genocide today, the Program’s fellows do not lobby or advocate specific policies in conjunction with their research. The Program approaches genocide as an historical, sociological, political, and scientific problem; policymaking implications are rarely considered. As for improving public knowledge about past atrocities not always understood as genocide, the GSP puts out myriad publications and has established missions in countries overseas with the goal of unearthing documents related to genocide. For instance, the GSP mission in Cambodia not only collected, translated, and published secret police documents, but was also set up in such a way that it now stands alone as an independent institution.
Such fostering of permanent growth in genocide studies may be the Program’s greatest contribution. According to Laura Saldivia, LAW ’10, a Law School doctoral student who was once a fellow for the GSP, the Program has helped “to bring together a remarkable diversity of scholars that has helped to entrench the discussion within the scholarly community” about an issue that was, until the mid-1990s, practically ignored in academia. Such an accomplishment is, without doubt, rare in any field.
At first glance, there’s nothing exceptional about it—a modest office in the corner of Luce Hall. But when Benedict Kiernan, Whitney Griswold Professor of History, digs out the files—literally thousands of photocopied pages of Khmer propaganda, records, and diaries—the place suddenly comes to life. Many undergraduates may not even know it exists, but Yale’s Genocide Studies Program is instrumental in the study and analysis of atrocities worldwide. In the case of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Kiernan, the program’s director, has made significant contributions to the field. “In 1996, our Cambodian mission discovered over 100,000 pages of secret police files,” said Kiernan. The files included lists of names produced during torture sessions with execution orders at the bottom signed by Pol Pot.
According to Kiernan, the Yale Genocide Studies Program is a “research and policy oriented program” that documents the mass murder of civilians and tries to prevent recurrences. Affiliates of the project have produced ten books and 35 working papers since the Program’s inception. Kiernan himself released a new book last Friday, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur, which incorporated research done using the Program’s funds.
The organization was founded in 1994 as the “Center for Cambodian Genocide Studies,” but Professor Ben Kiernan expanded its mission and changed its name in 1998. The Program does not have any full time staff—in this way, it is a kind of extracurricular activity for faculty and graduate students—but it does count historians, sociologists, a professor of psychiatry, and “people from comparative literature, from English, from human rights programs, from genocide studies programs in the Northeast, [and] political science” amongst its members, said Kiernan. Beyond faculty, myriad graduate students from multiple Yale professional schools, Europe, and South America, whose research focuses on topics ranging from Native Americans to the Armenian Massacre, associate themselves with the project. The Genocide Studies Program also convenes in a weekly seminar in which a wide range of speakers comment on varied genocide-related topics. Interestingly, it is also affiliated with The Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies, Yale’s principal environmental research organization, which is interested in correlations between genocide and the environment. In fact, no other Yale research institute has so global a list of affiliates.
To Kiernan, genocide must be considered in both the short and long term. In the long term, it’s a familiar list: war, poverty, political and economic destabilization. In the short term, the individual decisions and goals of political groups, as well as blind hatred—usually directed against an ethnic group—tend to unleash the pent-up forces of economic and societal deprivation. Kiernan firmly ruled out popularly-held beliefs about religious, political, or ideological tendencies as the roots of genocide: “Every movement has its bad apples.”
Kiernan makes it clear that the Program’s research has helped the academic community realize that no single policy will stop genocide. The prospective killers must be persuaded that the costs of their crimes outweigh the perceived benefits. Sometimes, such as in Rwanda and Kosovo, killers are beyond reason—a common ailment amongst the typical mass-murderer—and military force is necessary to put and end to the atrocities. However, Kiernan was careful to mention that such action should only be a last resort, for often military force can spawn more problems than it solves. For instance, American military intervention in Cambodia in the ’60s is believed to have been instrumental in propelling the Khmer Rouge to power. The Khmer Rouge, of course, went on to kill somewhere between one and three million Cambodians. Thus, more focused and precise measures, such as economic sanctions, become a preferable alternative if there are signs that the perpetrators value money over life. Finally, prosecution through criminal proceedings “makes new information available and deters future perpetrators,” explains Kiernan.
Despite the many political debates surrounding genocide today, the Program’s fellows do not lobby or advocate specific policies in conjunction with their research. The Program approaches genocide as an historical, sociological, political, and scientific problem; policymaking implications are rarely considered. As for improving public knowledge about past atrocities not always understood as genocide, the GSP puts out myriad publications and has established missions in countries overseas with the goal of unearthing documents related to genocide. For instance, the GSP mission in Cambodia not only collected, translated, and published secret police documents, but was also set up in such a way that it now stands alone as an independent institution.
Such fostering of permanent growth in genocide studies may be the Program’s greatest contribution. According to Laura Saldivia, LAW ’10, a Law School doctoral student who was once a fellow for the GSP, the Program has helped “to bring together a remarkable diversity of scholars that has helped to entrench the discussion within the scholarly community” about an issue that was, until the mid-1990s, practically ignored in academia. Such an accomplishment is, without doubt, rare in any field.
