The 2023 Syllabus
(2024 Syllabus Coming Soon) 

Alexander Alvarez

Northern Arizona University

Dr. Alex Alvarez is a Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University. In 2017-2018, he served as the Ida E. King Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University. His main areas of study are in the areas of collective and interpersonal violence. Some of his books include Violence: The Enduring Problem(2007, 2013 2nded., 2017 3rded.), Genocidal Crimes(2009), and Native America and the Question of Genocide(2014). His most recent book, Unstable Ground: Climate Change, Conflict, and Genocide was published in July 2017. He has also served as an editor for the journal Violence and Victims, was a founding co-editor of the journal Genocide Studies and Prevention, now known as Genocide Studies International, and has served as an editorial board member for a number of journals. He has been invited to speak and present his research in various countries such as Austria, Bosnia, Canada, England, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Sweden. 

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Prof. Alvarez is the Vice Chair of the Zoryan Institute's Academic Board of Directors.

Joyce Apsel

Course Director, New York University

Joyce Apsel Ph.D., J.D., is Clinical Professor of Humanities in Liberal Studies, College of Arts & Sciences at New York University, and President of the Institute for Study of Genocide.

Based on her research interests in comparative genocide and human rights, she teaches seminars in the Politics, Rights and Development Concentration. Course subjects include: Human Rights, Cultures of Peace and Terror, Global Violence, Societies at Risk, Politics of Mass Hate and Genocide, and Re-thinking, Human Rights, Humanitarianism and Global Citizenship. Together, in small classes, her students read about and debate the history and politics of just and unjust wars, the role of non-governmental organizations and the complex challenges of addressing targeted violence past and present---in the Ukraine to Chechnya to Darfur as well as structural violence in the US and elsewhere. Students have the opportunity to research their own interests; recent projects and senior theses include: Child Soldiers, HIV/AIDs and the Globalization of Drugs, Photography and Atrocity, Female Slave Trafficking in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe to aspects of the Indigenous Peoples and Slavery and the Global Migrant Crisis. Her goal is to explore diverse perspectives and critical analyses that facilitate each student finding his/her own voice and becoming informed, engaged, members of civil society and the global community. She is a recipient of the NYU Distinguished Teaching Award and of the student nominated NYU Martin Luther King, Jr. Teaching Award (2022).

Joyce Apsel is the author of Introducing Peace Museums (2016), nominated for the 2017 Dayton Literary Peace Prize in non-fiction. She is also the co-author with Amy Sodaro of Museums and Sites of Persuasion: Politics, Memory, and Human Rights (2019) and co-editor with Ernesto Verdeja of Genocide Matters: Ongoing Issues and Emerging Perspectives (2013). 

Doris Bergen

University of Toronto

Doris L. Bergen is the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies. Her research focuses on issues of religion, gender, and ethnicity in the Holocaust and World War II and comparatively in other cases of extreme violence. Her books include Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (1996); War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (2003); The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-First Centuries (edited, 2004); and Lessons and Legacies VIII (edited, 2008).

Prof. Bergen has held grants and fellowships from the SSHRC, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the DAAD, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and she has taught at the Universities of Warsaw, Pristina, Tuzla, Notre Dame, and Vermont. Her current projects include a book on German military chaplains in the Nazi era and a study of definitions of Germanness as revealed in the Volksdeutschen/ethnic Germans of Eastern Europe during World War II and the Holocaust. Bergen is a member of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington , D.C.

Maureen Hiebert

University of Calgary

Maureen S. Hiebert (PhD) is Associate Professor of Political Science and Research Fellow at the Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary. She teaches courses in law and politics, international law, the law of armed conflict, and genocide studies. Her publications include the book Constructing Genocide and Mass Violence: Society, Crises, Identity and several articles and book chapters on topics including identity construction and elite decision-making, impediments to genocide prevention, Mass Atrocity Response military operations, the limitations of international criminal trials, and the nature of violence in modernity. Her work has appeared in Genocide Studies International, Genocide Studies and Prevention, Politics and Governance, and European Legacy and several edited volumes. Her current research explores the challenges posed to the law of armed conflict and democratic civil-military relations by military AI and lethal autonomous weapon systems, role of law in the perpetration of genocide, and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council funded collaborative project on the nexus between modernity and political violence called The Oddities of Violence. She was the 2019-2020 recipient of the Faculty of Graduate Studies Great Supervisor Award for the Department of Political Science.

Prof. Hiebert is the Chair of the Zoryan Institute’s Academic Board of Directors.

Elisa von Joeden-Forgey

Keene State College

Prof Elisa von Joeden-Forgey is an Associate Professor in the Department of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College starting September 2020. 

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Previously, Elisa von Joeden-Forgey was the Dr. Marsha Raticoff Grossman Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University of New Jersey, where she taught undergraduate and graduate classes on the Holocaust, comparative genocide, gender, sexual violence, war, human rights and genocide prevention. She was also the First Vice President of the IAGS. Prior to this, she was a Visiting Scholar and Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her BA in History from Columbia University and a Ph.D. degree in modern German and African history from the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation, "Nobody's People: Colonial Subjects, Race Power and the German State, 1884-1945" examined the colonial roots of National Socialist ideology through the lens of the debates surrounding the African presence in Germany.  Dr. von Joeden-Forgey has received research grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Ford Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation, and has published widely in the fields of comparative genocide and German history.

Her current research on gender and genocide has appeared in Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, the Oxford Handbook on Genocide, New Directions in Genocide Research, Genocide: A Bibliographic Review, Hidden Genocide: Power, Knowledge and Memory, and the forthcoming collected volumes Reconstructing Atrocity Prevention and Economic Aspects of Genocide, Mass Killing, and Their Prevention. She is currently completing a book on gender and the prevention of genocide that will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.  In 2010 and 2011 Dr. von Joeden-Forgey was a workshop coordinator for the Raphael Lemkin Program in Genocide Prevention hosted by the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation in Krakow and Oswiecim, Poland. In 2014 she was chosen as one of thirty-six scholars to join the Stephen S. Weinstein Symposium on Post-Holocaust Ethics at Wroxton College in Oxfordshire, England. At Stockton College, she is working to develop a master's-level program in genocide prevention and is co-chairing faculty research and teaching committee on the subject of sexualized violence on campuses in a global framework. 

Kerri J. Malloy

San Jose State University

Kerri J. Malloy (Yurok/Karuk) is an Assistant Professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies at San Jose State University. His research focuses on the genocide of Indigenous peoples and the ongoing healing and reconciliation in North America. He has over fifteen years of experience working with federally recognized tribes and tribal organizations. He chairs the Indigenous Caucus and serves on the Advisory Board of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. He holds a Master of Jurisprudence in Indian Law from The University of Tulsa and a doctoral degree in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from Gratz College.

Suren Manukyan

Yerevan State University

Suren Manukyan is the Head of the Vahakn Dadrian Department of Comparative Genocide Studies with the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute (AGMI) and holds the UNESCO Chair on Prevention of Genocide and Other Atrocity Crimes at Yerevan State University (YSU). He also teaches Armenian History and Genocide-related courses at the American University of Armenia (AUA). He was a Fulbright Scholar at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University of New Jersey (2012-2013) and Kazan Visiting Fellow at California State University, Fresno (2021-22). He has extensive experience with the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), including as a member of the IAGS Resolutions committee (2015-2017) and an elected member of the Advisory Board (2017-2019 and 2019-2021). His research deals with genocidal violence and perpetrators, focusing mainly on micro-level dynamics and the historiography of genocide. His last publication is Suren Manukyan, The historiography of the Armenian genocide, Handbook of Genocide Studies (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023) 54-71.

William A. Schabas

Middlesex University

Professor William A. Schabas is professor of international law at Middlesex University in London. He is also professor of international humanitarian law and human rights at Leiden University, emeritus professor of human rights law at the National University of Ireland Galway and honorary chairman of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, invited visiting scholar at the Paris School of International Affairs (Sciences Politiques), honorary professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, visiting fellow of Kellogg College of the University of Oxford, and professeur associé at the Université du Québec à Montréal. Prof. Schabas is a ‘door tenant’ at the chambers of 9 Bedford Row, in London.  Professor Schabas holds BA and MA degrees in history from the University of Toronto and LLB, LLM and LLD degrees from the University of Montreal, as well as honorary doctorates in law from several universities.

He is the author of more than twenty books dealing in whole or in part with international human rights law, including: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights : travaux préparatoires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Unimaginable Atrocities, Justice, Politics and Rights at the War Crimes Tribunals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), The International Criminal Court: A Commentary on the Rome Statute (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), Introduction to the International Criminal Court (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, 4th ed.), Genocide in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed., 2009) and The Abolition of the Death Penalty in International Law (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003, 3rd ed.). He has also published more than 300 articles in academic journals, principally in the field of international human rights law and international criminal law. His writings have been translated into Russian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Nepali and Albanian. 

Professor Schabas is editor-in-chief of Criminal Law Forum , the quarterly journal of the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law. He is President of the Irish Branch of the International Law Association and chair of the International Institute for Criminal Investigation. From 2002 to 2004 he served as one of three international members of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Professor Schabas has worked as a consultant on capital punishment for the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, and drafted the 2010 report of the Secretary-General on the status of the death penalty (UN Doc. E/2010/10).  Professor Schabas was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2006. He was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2007. He has been awarded the Vespasian V. Pella Medal for International Criminal Justice of the Association internationale de droit pénal, and the Gold Medal in the Social Sciences of the Royal Irish Academy.

Scott Straus

University of California-Berkeley

Scott Straus is a Professor of Political Science at the University of California-Berkeley and the Mahatma Gandhi Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Straus studies political violence, genocide, human rights, and post-conflict politics with an empirical focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. He is the author or editor of ten books, including Making and Unmaking Nations: War, Leadership, and Genocide in Modern Africa (Cornell, 2015), which won the Grawemeyer Award for Improving World Order, the Lepgold Prize from Georgetown University, the Best Book in Conflict Processes from the American Political Science Association, and the Best Book in Human Rights from the International Studies Association. Straus also wrote The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War (Cornell, 2006), which won the Best Book in Political Science from the Association of American Publishers and Honorable Mention for the Melville Herskovits prize from the African Studies Association. He also authored Fundamentals of Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention (US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2016) and co-authored, with Barry Driscoll, Introduction to International Studies: Global Forces, Interactions, and Tensions (Sage, 2022, 2nd ed.) He is an editor of The Cambridge World History of Genocide, Vol III (Cambridge, 2023). Straus has published articles in American Journal of Political Science, World Politics, Politics and Society, Foreign Affairs, Perspectives on Politics, African Affairs, Journal of Peace Research, Terrorism and Political Violence, Genocide Studies and Prevention, The Journal of Genocide Research, and other journals. Straus is currently a co-editor of African Affairs, as well as a founding editor of the Paris-based journal Violence: An International Journal and of the Critical Human Rights book series at the University of Wisconsin Press, alongside Tyrell Haberkorn. He has received fellowships from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the United States Institute of Peace. Prior to returning to Berkeley in 2021, he was the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Political Science and International Studies, where he also served as Chair and Associate Chair of the Department of Political Science and won the campus-wide William Kiekhofer Distinguished Teaching Award. In 2016, President Obama appointed him to the Council of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Straus continues to serve on the Museum’s Committee on Conscience. Prior to his academic career, Straus was a freelance journalist based in Nairobi; he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his 1996 coverage of the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Cheng Xu

University of Toronto

Cheng Xu is an alumnus of the Genocide and Human Rights University Program. He is an incoming Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Department of Government at Smith College. As a former Canadian Armed Forces infantry officer and paratrooper with the Third Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, he deployed on Roto 0 of Operation Reassurance in Central and Eastern Europe in 2014. His academic research examines the impacts of community level social relations on insurgencies and civil war with a focus on Southeast Asia. Cheng has published on the topics of civil wars, rebellion, peacebuilding, ethnic conflict, and genocide. He is a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholar. He served as a research fellow and senior policy analyst with Global Affairs Canada, under the Department’s Strategic Policy branch where he provided research support for its Feminist Foreign Policy, Strategic Gaming, Future of Diplomacy, and Feminist International Assistance Policy efforts.

James E. Waller

Keene State College

Dr. James Waller is the inaugural Christopher J. Dodd Chair in Human Rights Practice at the University of Connecticut.  At UConn, he also directs the Dodd Human Rights Impact Programs for the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute and is a Professor of Literatures, Cultures, Languages, and Human Rights.  In addition, he is a Visiting Scholar at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queen’s University Belfast.  He is the author of six books, most notably his award-winning Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing (Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 2007), Confronting Evil: Engaging Our Responsibility to Prevent Genocide (Oxford University Press, 2016), and A Troubled Sleep: Risk and Resilience in Contemporary Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press, 2021).  In 2017, Waller was the inaugural recipient of the Engaged Scholarship Prize from the International Association of Genocide Scholars in recognition of his exemplary engagement in advancing genocide awareness and prevention.  Waller has written for The Washington Post, The Irish News, and The Conversation and is frequently interviewed by broadcast and print media, including PBS, CNN, CBC, the Los Angeles Times, Salon, National Geographic, Scientific American, and The New York Times.