Totten on Symposium Agenda About Albright-Cohen Genocide-Prevention Report

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Two former U.S. Cabinet members released a report late last year offering practical recommendations on how to prevent genocide and mass atrocities. Samuel Totten, professor of secondary education at the University of Arkansas, has been invited to discuss the report at a genocide prevention symposium March 13 in Washington.

The report, “Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policymakers,” was authored by former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and former Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen. They co-chair the Genocide Prevention Task Force, a body jointly convened by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Academy of Diplomacy and the U.S. Institute of Peace.

The task force comprises more than 50 people with international, diplomatic, political, government, military, academic, humanitarian and other relevant experience.

The co-chairs explain in their foreword: “This report provides a blueprint that can enable the United States to take preventive action, along with international partners, to forestall the specter of future cases of genocide and mass atrocities. The world agrees that genocide is unacceptable and yet genocide and mass killings continue. Our challenge is to match words to deeds and stop allowing the unacceptable.”

Totten, an internationally known genocide scholar, spent six months in Rwanda last year on a Fulbright Fellowship to develop a genocide studies program at the National University of Rwanda. He also interviewed survivors of the 1994 “machete genocide” in Rwanda for a book to be published later this year. Totten, an author and editor of numerous books about genocide, has also been involved in investigating the continuing genocide in Darfur, Sudan. In 2004, he interviewed refugees in camps along the Chad/Darfur border as part of a U.S. State Department atrocities investigation team.

The objective of the one-day symposium at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars is to assemble a group of experts in genocide and prevention from various disciplines to provide an independent, in-depth, scholarly review and assessment of its findings. While most of the scholars are from the United States, one is from Great Britain and another is from Denmark. The papers presented and discussed at the symposium will be published in the spring 2009 issue of Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal.

Totten’s presentation is titled “Words Versus Action: An Interesting Plan BUT Then There’s the Uncomfortable REALITY of Realpolitik and the Lack of Political Will.”

In addition to his appearance at the Washington symposium, Totten will give eight lectures on various facets of genocide in three countries over the next few months: three in Utah, two in Michigan, one in Toronto, one in Kigali, Rwanda, and one in Butare, Rwanda.

With a colleague who helped him during his time in Rwanda, Totten also established a scholarship fund for survivors of genocide. Information is available online at Post Genocide Education Fund, http://www.postgen.org.