By ADAM MULLER
In reflecting on the challenging year that has been, one of the signal events for me remains the surprise November announcement of the closure of Concordia University’s Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS). I say “surprise” here because I had no prior inkling of such a radical decision by the university’s administration, apparently partly a consequence of Concordia’s budgetary woes but also a response to the impossibility of reconciling divergent views of scholars associated with the institute. Such divergences and related frictions have made the work of genocide and human rights scholars much more difficult of late, just as they have undermined efforts at prevention by individuals, governments, and NGOs. The general public also remains very confused about genocide and divided on how to tackle it. This makes the education, advocacy and outreach undertaken by MIGS and its partners seem all the more necessary. Given the dire need for more and smarter genocide talk, as well as the impactfulness of MIGS outreach initiatives such as the Will to Intervene Project and Raoul Wallenberg Legacy of Leadership Project, Concordia’s decision to shutter the institute seems at best ill-timed, and at worst potentially harmful.
As former vice-president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and current co-editor of the journal Genocide Studies International (GSI), I’ve long been aware of the positive impact of para-academic organizations like MIGS on genocide studies research, as well as on (not unrelated) efforts at genocide and mass atrocity prevention. Such incubators and sponsors of collaborative research, teaching, and advocacy do important work stimulating, consolidating, and disseminating knowledge about mass atrocity crimes and human rights violations. Their outputs typically address multiple audiences, from schoolchildren to government functionaries and elected officials, always with a view to fostering coalitions of motivated and well-informed individuals deeply committed to joining with others to care for victims of violence, hold perpetrators to account, and prevent the recurrence of future atrocities.
While MIGS is no longer able to continue this vital work, all is not lost. For Canada is blest to be home to several similar organizations making an outsize contribution to securing local and global peace and human security. One of the most significant of these is the Zoryan Institute, whose programming extends in multiple directions to educate on a broad range of contemporary and historical genocides and human rights struggles. Founded in 1982, initially with a mandate to combat denial of the 1915 Armenian Genocide through documentation and education, Zoryan has enlarged its focus to become a major site for comparative research and teaching about genocide and human rights. In addition to underwriting GSI, Zoryan stages an annual summer institute, the Genocide and Human Rights University Program (GHRUP), which since its inception in 2002 has introduced over 500 emerging scholars from 73 countries to cutting-edge genocide and human rights scholarship via seminars run by some of the world’s leading academics and human rights and genocide professionals. Zoryan’s approach to genocide education is fundamentally comparative and interdisciplinary, and over the years it has developed a critically well-regarded learning system and academic support network. Through the detailed consideration and juxtaposition of historical traumas afflicting different groups of people, the GHRUP seeks to promote the idea that genocide affects all of us, directly and indirectly. For this reason genocide prevention remains a priority, as well as a shared responsibility.
Notwithstanding the urgency and moral weight of Zoryan’s mission, organizations like it still struggle to fulfil their mandates, especially if they prize ideological and fiscal autonomy. Exemption from governmental or other institutional oversight is desirable in so far as it encourages freedom of thought and so the cultivation of novel approaches to deeply entrenched problems. But such autonomy comes at a price, most obviously when securing the funding required to change the way the world currently works. At a time of diminishing trust in “facts” and growing suspicion of one another, the task of building productive coalitions of highly-motivated individuals linked by a shared desire to comprehend and prevent genocide through the defence human rights might seem naively overoptimistic. And yet now this kind of intellectual engagement and activism is more necessary than ever. Without the track record and ongoing efforts of organizations like MIGS and the Zoryan Institute, we risk further (and more awful) violent conflicts and confusions. Those troubled by these outcomes, and possessing the means to do so, would do well to consider directing their financial and other resources to agencies such as Zoryan. Only by working with and through them can we hope to ensure that, as Holocaust scholar Hans Kellner once put it, the “Never Again” of genocide is now.
Adam Muller is Director of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Manitoba
