Founder and Chair Will Present at Genocide Education Conference

Raffi Sarkissian, founder and chair of the Sara Corning Centre for Genocide Education, will be presenting on the benefits and challenges of genocide education at an international, multidisciplinary conference titled “Understanding Atrocities: Remembering, Representing and Teaching Genocide.” The February 19–21, 2014, event is organized by the faculty of arts, faculty of teaching and learning and office of the provost of Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta.

Sarkissian emphasized in regard to the meeting, “Genocide education is an avenue through which students can go beyond the historical facts and come to understand causes, consequences and solutions. At a time when communities are experiencing discrimination and inequality of different forms and levels all around the world, genocide education’s goal is to prevent escalating hatred  and to mend societies through education. Through it, teachers seek to inspire youth to truly work towards safeguarding the human rights for all.”

As per its program and website, “the conference will include keynote addresses by James Waller, the Cohen Chair of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College, and author of Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing (2002); Andrea Smith, author of Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide(2005); and Christopher Powell, author of Barbaric Civilization: A Critical Sociology of Genocide (2011). [It] will also include a panel discussion on political and academic encounters with genocide, with Allan Rock, the President of the University of Ottawa and former Canadian Justice Minister, and Lloyd Axworthy, the President of the University of Winnipeg and former Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs.”

More information about the event and how to register for it can be found at http://understandingatrocities.mtroyal.ca/.