Joyce A. Apsel Joyce A. Apsel, Ph.D., J.D. is an historian, attorney and Master Teacher in the General Studies Program at New York University, where she teaches courses in Great Books and on Genocide and Human Rights. She has taught courses on genocide from a multidisciplinary, comparative perspective at a variety of institutions including a graduate course at Drew University in New Jersey on The Armenian Genocide and the Politics of Denial. She is founder and director of the non-profit Rights Works International, an international educational project, and conducts in-class workshops for students (middle school and up) and teachers on issues of genocide and human rights. Dr. Apsel is a former president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (2001-2003) and a member of the Board of the Institute for the Study of Genocide. For four years she was Director of Education for the Anne Frank Center USA and traveled nationally with their exhibits conducting workshops on tolerance education and the history of genocide and human rights. Dr. Apsel is the editor of Teaching about Human Rights (2005) and Darfur: Genocide before Our Eyes (2nd edition 2006). She is co-editor with Helen Fein of Teaching about Genocide (3rd ed. published in 2002 by the American Sociological Association. for the Institute for the Study of Genocide) and has written articles on education, children's rights, and related issues. Two upcoming articles are entitled "The Politics of Education and Children's Rights" and "Education, Genocide and Human Rights." Dr. Apsel is current NGO/DPI representative for the International Peace Museums Network at the United Nations as well as a jurist for the biennial Lemkin Award for the outstanding work on genocide.

Brent Beardsley Born in Ottawa and raised in Montreal, Major Brent Beardsley is a 25-year veteran of the Canadian Army. He graduated from a Pre-Arts program at Sir George Williams University (1974), completed a BA in History from Concordia University (1977), a post-graduate diploma in Education from McGill University (1978) and a Masters Degree in Applied Science in Management (1999) from the Royal Military College of Canada. Major Beardsley joined the Canadian Forces as an Infantry Officer in 1978. He has served four tours of regimental duty with operational tours in Norway, Germany and Cyprus. On extra-regimental duty he has been employed as an instructor on the Basic Officer Training Course, as a doctrine author responsible for the first draft of the first Canadian Forces Peacekeeping Manual and as the Chief Instructor of the Canadian Forces Peacekeeping Training Center. He is currently a research officer at the Canadian Forces Leadership Institute. In 1993 and 1994, before and during the genocide in Rwanda, Major Beardsley served as the Personal Staff Officer to then Major-General Romeo Dallaire, the Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda. Major Beardsley was an eyewitness to the genocide in Rwanda and earlier this year testified for the prosecution in the case against Colonel Theoneste Bagasora, the alleged architect of the Rwandan Genocide, at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha Tanzania. Major Beardsley collaborated with General Dallaire in writing his best-selling book, "Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, "which was released in Canada in the fall of 2003. Major Beardsley has also collaborated in a number of documentaries, articles and commemorative events about the Rwandan Genocide. Major Beardsley currently resides in Kingston, Ontario with his wife Margaret and children Jessica, Joshua and Jackson. He is currently completing a second graduate degree at RMC focusing on genocide studies and humanitarian intervention in preparation for his retirement from the Canadian Forces in 2005.

Gerald Caplan Gerald Caplan has an MA in Canadian history from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. in African history from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He has lived in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Zambia and Nigeria. He is the author of two scholarly history books as well as author of a collection of his newspaper articles, two UNICEF reports, two major Canadian public policy studies, and many articles and book reviews in magazines and academic journals. His most recent major publication was a comprehensive report called Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide for the International Panel of Eminent Personalities established by the Organization of African Unity to Investigate the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda. Recent articles and reviews have focused on Rwanda and Darfur, the study of genocide, and issues related to transitional justice. Dr. Caplan has represented Canadian international NGOs on missions to assess human rights, aid projects and elections in Central America, Namibia and Mozambique. For many years he has been a public affairs commentator on television and through newspaper articles. Much of Caplan’s time in recent years was devoted to a major international initiative that he founded called "Remembering Rwanda: The Rwanda Genocide 10th Anniversary Memorial Project." He also co-edited with Eric Markusen a special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research devoted to recent scholarship related to the genocide. Gerry Caplan recently completed two reports for UNICEF, WHO and the Africa Union for the 2005 Summit of African Heads of State on child survival strategies for Africa. He has also developed and has been teaching a curriculum on the role of the media in the Rwandan genocide for the UN's University for Peace. Dr. Caplan is the volunteer chair of the International Advisory Board for the African AIDS Initiative of the Centre for International Health, University of Toronto as well as advisor to Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa.

Vahakn N. Dadrian Vahakn N. Dadrian received his undergraduate and graduate education in Europe at the University of Berlin (mathematics), the University of Vienna (history) and the University of Zürich (international law). He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago. His academic background includes affiliations with Harvard University as a Research Fellow, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Guest Professor and Duke University as a Visiting Professor. In the last twenty years Professor Dadrian has lectured extensively in French, English and German in a number of prestigious European institutions. He was the first Armenian scholar invited in 1995 to the British Parliament, House of Commons, to deliver a lecture commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. In 1998, he was inducted into the ranks of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, and was decorated by with the Khorenatsi Medal, Armenia's highest cultural award. Professor Dadrian's field of specialization is genocide in general and the Armenian Genocide in particular. He has an extensive list of publications on the subject, including several articles on the Jewish Holocaust and the victimization of the American Indians. His groundbreaking research has been supported by two large grants from the National Science Foundation, resulting in the publication of two separate monographs by the Yale Journal of International Law. After serving as Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York from 1970 to 1991, Professor Dadrian shifted his academic career to conducting research full-time on the Armenian Genocide. For several years he was engaged as Director of a large Genocide Study Project sponsored by the H. F. Guggenheim Foundation. The project's first major achievement was the publication, now in its fifth printing expanded, of an extensive volume titled The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (Oxford & Providence, RI, 1995). This work has appeared in French (Paris, 2nd printing) and in Greek (Athens). Professor Dadrian's other major work, German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide: A Review of the Historical Evidence of German Complicity, was published in 1996 (Cambridge, MA) and is now in its third edition. His third volume, Warrant for Genocide: The Key Elements of the Turko-Armenian Conflict, appeared in 1999 (London and New Brunswick, NJ). His latest book is titled The Key Elements of the Turkish Denial of the Armenian Genocide (Cambridge, MA and Toronto, 1999). This book was translated into Spanish in Buenes Aires (2002). In addition to these monographs, Dadrian has published numerous articles in scholarly journals around the world. Professor Dadrian currently is Director of Genocide Research at the Zoryan Institute.

 

Maureen Hiebert Maureen Hiebert is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation is on “The Origins of Genocide: Political Culture, Crisis, and the Construction of Victims,” using the Holocaust and Cambodia as case studies. In addition to teaching a course on Theories of Genocide, her interests include comparative politics, both industrial and developing; comparative theory and methodology; Holocaust studies; political violence ethnic conflict and nationalism; Southeast Asian politics, particularly Vietnam and Cambodia; pre-1945 German history and politics; international relations theory; the role of international crises and the international community in genocide; international law, justice and criminal proceedings in post-conflict situations. She will be a research associate at the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary beginning in fall 2006.

 

Herbert Hirsch Herbert Hirsch is Professor of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, where he teaches courses on American politics; political psychology; and the politics of war, violence and genocide. He is the author of several books and numerous articles and book reviews, including Genocide and the Politics of Memory (1995), and Anti-Genocide: Building an American Movement to Prevent Genocide (2002). He has presented papers at The American Political Science Association, International Studies Association, Southwestern Social Science Association, American Historical Association, Southern Political Science Association, Western Political Science association, Annual Scholar's Conference on The Holocaust, Australian Association of Jewish Studies, Remembering for the Future II, Berlin, Germany, Fourth International Stockholm Forum on Preventing Genocide, and several others. Dr. Hirsch serves on numerous advisory boards and regularly offers a course on The Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights at the Virginia Holocaust Memorial Museum. He gave a seminar for the policy planning staff at the U.S. Department of State about the events in Bosnia in 1992 and has lectured in Australia, England, Ireland, Germany and Sweden. Dr. Hirsch was selected as one of 30 scholars to participate in the Goldner Symposium on Post-Holocaust Ethics at Wroxton College in Oxfordshire, England. He is also one of twenty-two scholars whose biography is featured in Pioneers in Genocide Studies: Confronting Mass Death in the Century of Genocide. Dr. Hirsch is currently working on a new book, tentatively titled Building a Non-Genocidal Society and is one of the editors of the forthcoming new periodical, Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal.

 

Claudia Koonz Claudia Koonz received her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, her M.A. from Columbia University, and her Ph.D. from Rutgers University. She has taught at College of the Holy Cross, and since 1988 at Duke University. Claudia Koonz's interests are in twentieth-century German history, women's history, and genocide. She has received research support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the German-Marshall Fund, Duke University, the American Council for Learned Societies, and the National Humanities Center. Her 1987 book Mothers in the Fatherland received several awards: it was a finalist for the National Book Award non-fiction nomination; the Boston Globe-Winship Book of the Year Award; the Berkshire Conference 1987 Book Award; the Jesuit Honor Society book of the year; and it was one of the New York Times and Libération's (Paris) best 100 books of 1987 and 1990, respectively. She is the co-director of the Duke Refugee Action Project as well as with summer and post graduate internship training in Croatia, Central America, and other areas. In addition, she is the current president of the Berkshire Conference for Women Historians.

 

Eric Markusen Eric Markusen is Professor of Sociology and Social Work at Southwest Minnesota State University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Danish Institute of International Studies, Department for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Copenhagen. Markusen earned his Masters of Social Work degree from the University of Washington and the Ph.D in Sociology from the University of Minnesota. His publications include The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat, with Robert Jay Lifton, and The Holocaust and Strategic Bombing: Genocide and Total War in the Twentieth Century, with David Kopf. He was an Associate Editor of the two-volume Encyclopedia of Genocide. Markusen serves as European Representative for the International Association of Genocide Scholars, is on the editorial board of the Journal of Human Rights, and is one of the editors of the forthcoming new periodical, Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal. His current work focuses on the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda and the work of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

William A. Schabas, OC Professor William A. Schabas is director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Galway, where he also holds the chair in human rights law. Professor Schabas holds BA. and MA degrees from the University of Toronto and LLB, LLM. and LLD degrees from the University of Montreal. William Schabas is an Officer of the Order of Canada. Professor Schabas is the author of eighteen monographs dealing in whole or in part with international human rights law, including Introduction to the International Criminal Court (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 2nd ed.), Genocide in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), The Abolition of the Death Penalty in International Law (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003, 3rd ed.), International Human Rights Law and the Canadian Charter (Toronto, Carswell, 1996), The Death Penalty as Cruel Treatment and Torture (Boston, Northeastern University Press, 1996) and Précis du droit international des droits de la personne (Montréal, Éditions Yvon Blais, 1997). He has also edited many collections of essays and similar volumes. He has also published more than 170 articles in academic journals, principally in the field of international human rights law. His writings have been translated into Russian, Chinese, Spanish, German, Japanese, Farsi, Arabic, Portuguese and Albanian. They have been cited in judgments of many of the world’s leading constitutional and international courts, including the United States Supreme Court, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the Supreme Court of Canada and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Professor Schabas is editor-in-chief of Criminal Law Forum, the quarterly journal of the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law. Professor Schabas has often participated in international human rights missions on behalf of non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International (International Secretariat), the International Federation of Human Rights, and the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development to Rwanda, Burundi, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Cambodia and Guyana. He is legal counsel to Amnesty International Ireland. He has worked as a consultant or independent expert on behalf of various governments and international organizations. He was a delegate of the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy to the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, Rome, 15 June-17 July 1998. He is a member of the board of several international human rights organizations and institutions, including the International Institute for Criminal Investigation, of which he is chair. From 1991 to 2000, William Schabas was professor of human rights law and criminal law at the Département des sciences juridiques of the Université du Québec à Montréal, a Department he chaired from 1994-1998; he now holds the honorary position of professeur associé at that institution. He has also taught as a visiting or adjunct professor at McGill University, Université de Montréal, Université de Montpellier, Université de Paris X-Nanterre, Université de Paris XI, Université de Paris II Pantheon-Assas, Dalhousie University and University of Rwanda, and he has lectured at the International Institute for Human Rights (Strasbourg), the Canadian Foreign Service Institute, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research and the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre. He is an honorary professor of human rights law at the Law Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing. A member of the Quebec Bar from 1984 to 2005, he served on the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal from 1996 to 2000. Professor Schabas was a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington during the academic year 1998-99. In 1998, Professor Schabas was awarded the Bora Laskin Research Fellowship in Human Rights by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In May 2002, the President of Sierra Leone appointed Professor Schabas to the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, upon the recommendation of Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. He served as one of three international commissioners throughout the activities of the Commission, from 2002 to 2004.

 

Roger W. Smith Roger W. Smith is Professor Emeritus of Government at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, where he has taught political theory and the comparative study of genocide. Prof. Smith has written extensively on the nature, language, history and denial of genocide. In addition to numerous articles, he is the editor and co-author of Guilt: Man and Society, and editor of Genocide: Essays Toward Understanding, Early-Warning, and Prevention. He is a founding member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. As a president of the IAGS, he has spoken extensively on the topic of genocide in the United States, Canada, France and Armenia. In 2000, Prof. Smith gave testimony before the U.S. Congress relating to the Armenian Genocide Resolution (H. Res. 596). Dr. Smith has been honoured by the Armenian Students Association with the Arthur Dadian Award for the preservation and presentation of Armenian history.

Gregory Stanton Dr. Gregory Stanton is the James Farmer Professor of Human Rights at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and is President of Genocide Watch and Director of the Cambodian Genocide Project. Dr. Stanton has worked for human rights since the 1960's, when he was a voting rights worker in Mississippi. He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Ivory Coast, Africa and as the Church World Service/CARE Field Director in Cambodia in 1980. He has degrees from Oberlin College, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale Law School, and a Doctorate in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago. Dr. Stanton has been a Law Professor at Washington and Lee and American Universities and the University of Swaziland. He was a legal advisor to the Ukrainian independence movement. He served in the State Department from 1992 to 1999, where he wrote the United Nations resolutions that created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He founded the Cambodian Genocide Project in 1981, which is about to result in trials for the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge by a U.N./ Cambodian tribunal. In 1999, he founded Genocide Watch and the International Campaign to End Genocide. Dr. Stanton was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 2001-2002, where he worked on his forthcoming book, The Eight Stages of Genocide: How Governments Can Tell When Genocide Is Coming and What They Can Do To Stop It.