D. Bruce MacKay
University of Lethbridge
4401 University Drive
Lethbridge, Alberta Canada
T1K 3M4 mackayb@uleth.ca
Address to the Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs - May 19, 2005
Genocide is a difficult topic. It is difficult in part because, to me anyway, it seems so distasteful, so wrong, and so unimaginable. Today my plan is not to offer any grand solutions but simply to suggest an approach that can generate fruitful questions. And perhaps fruitful questions can lead to imaginative answers and even solutions. Genocide is a persistent problem and one that has produced and that continues to produce the deaths of millions of people. So, if we care at all for humanity, and I do, then we must explore it, no matter how difficult a topic it is.
As you all know, we have just passed the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II. I must confess that I am one of the generations for whom the War exists only in books and documentaries. There are no war stories in my family’s experience. My father was in basic training and marching on the parade ground the day the war ended.
So it all seems very distant and yet very significant, nonetheless, and important to remember. But I can only imagine what it must have been like to have fought and to have felt the effects of the war. I have only my imagination.
I confess too that all my life, I have existed in a time of great prosperity. Really, I have wanted for nothing. All of my basic needs have been easily met. When I have suffered for lack of anything, it has only been because of my own foolishness and I have never suffered long. I am enormously privileged, in fact. I have a great deal of education and I have the luxury of being able to continue to learn at the same time that I teach and try to encourage others to learn. I have a family; friends; a nice home; a little patch of land. I live a comfortable life. I have never been threatened by another person. I have never felt my life was in danger. I have never felt that I had to defend all that I have against someone else who wanted to take it. I don’t have a gun.
It is not easy for me to imagine a less privileged or prosperous life, or a less peaceful time. It is difficult too to imagine a situation where other people might want to take my life, my family, my home, and all that I have.
Sixty years ago, as well, the Nazi death camps were liberated. And just recently, on May 6, we passed Yom ha Shoah, the day of Holocaust remembrance. Millions of Jews were systematically exterminated in the Holocaust. It is very difficult for me to imagine such a thing.
I lived in Jerusalem for a time while I was working on my PhD dissertation. On the day of Shoah that year, I was actually working on an archaeological excavation in a rural area of Israel. We heard a siren wail in the distance to mark the beginning of the time of silence. A tractor plowing in a nearby field stopped and was quiet. The driver climbed down and stood beside his machine. We all got out of our squares of excavation and stood quietly next to the dusty remains from twenty-six hundred years ago that we were working to uncover. It was eerie. Everyone was silent. Remembering. Imagining.
A few years after the end of World War II and the discovery of the death camps, the newly formed United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
This convention begins with a general statement that the parties to the Convention recognize that “at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity” and “that, in order to liberate mankind from such an odious scourge, international co-operation is required” (United Nations, 1951). Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide. It says, “genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national ethnical, racial or religious group” (United Nations, 1951). The acts it lists are, “(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (d) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (e) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” (United Nations, 1951).
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide expresses reasonable ideals, it seems to me. Coming so soon after the end of World War II it clearly represents an effort to learn from the experience and an effort to ensure such genocide never happens again. And yet, genocides have continued. Here are just a few examples.
Why? Why, in spite of the best intentions expressed in the United Nations Convention, in spite of the advances the world has seen in health, energy, communication, and technology, why are these genocides continuing? Why does the problem of Genocide persist?
Of course there is debate about the exact nature of these and many other conflicts. Not all of them are well understood, well-documented, or well-reported so that we have enough information or, in fact, even know that they exist. Are these legitimate military conflicts with unfortunate collateral deaths of non-combatants? Do these conflicts meet the legal definition of genocide? Add to these, other questions and accusations of denial and charges of political and economic interest or, as the case may be, dis-interest, and the picture becomes considerably more muddy.
But my question today is not about definition or labelling. There is ample evidence that all over the world groups of people are systematically murdering each other simply because they belong to specific identifiable groups. One person at a time, a trigger is being pulled, a knife or machete is being wielded, someone is dying. Why are these genocides occurring and why have they occurred repeatedly since 1948 in spite of international commitments to free the world from “such an odious scourge”? Why? I have no experience of any thing remotely close to these horrendous events. I can’t even imagine what those involved experience.
How then, when I can’t imagine it, am I, or anyone else in a similar position to me, able to understand, let alone act, so that genocides never occur ever again? How can I understand so that those who experienced World War II, those who survived the Holocaust, those who have lived through more recent genocides - people who remember their own personal experiences; how can I learn so that I and others who live secure privileged and prosperous lives will understand and not forget? How can we, the comfortable privileged ones, make some progress in ridding the world of this ‘odious scourge’ of genocide?
What is required, I think, is imagination. I don’t mean imagination as a flight of fancy. By imagination I mean the act of leaving behind one’s current reality and of picturing another place, situation, time, and perhaps even what it must be like to be another person. This reflects the Latin root of the word imagination, imaginari, ‘to picture oneself.’ For me, I must picture what I have no direct experience of. I must create in my mind and in my heart images of war, death, and killing; I must leave behind my privileged comfortable existence; I must imagine my life in danger and a burning desire in my heart to defend or to take, no matter what the cost. I must imagine hatred and anger and brutality. I must imagine a state of being that is totally different from my own character and sense of self. I must imagine what it is like to care absolutely nothing for another person who is not of my own group.
The kind of imagining I have just described is an active process. It requires effort, discipline, and control. It contrasts with easier passive imaginative processes. Too often, I think, we allow ourselves this passivity of imagination. Inundated as we are with multiple media and powerful images in print and on screen, it might seem that little is left for us to picture ourselves. But when we cease to apply our own imaginations critically, when we cease to analyze or evaluate the images presented to us through various media, then we are open to suggestion and to manipulation of our imaginations by others who would like us to see and believe what they would like us to see and believe.
However, to imagine in an active way requires a free and flexible mind. We are fortunate, as we all know, to live in a free country. But I think this freedom has generally come to mean that we are free to pursue economic independence so that we can do and buy whatever we want. And while an interpretation of freedom from this perspective might encourage entrepreneurial imagination, I’m not sure it encourages the imagination needed to deal with this persistent problem of genocide.
How then does one develop and encourage the freedom to imagine actively the horrors of genocide? One way, it seems to me, is through a liberal education.
A liberal education is designed to free the mind. A liberal education focuses on liberty, and the freedoms that are necessary in a democracy, no matter what political party one supports. A liberal education encourages the development of tools and skills that will enable students to use their liberty. Part of that, of course, means learning the knowledge and skills that will be necessary to participate in the marketplace, knowledge and skills that will enable students to get a job once they graduate and to contribute to their communities through their work, purchases and taxes.
But a significant part of that liberty also is the liberty of imagination. Canada’s great literary critic Northrop Frye said that a liberally educated person will be, “very dissatisfied with the world , very finicky about accepting what it offers him, and yet unable to leave it alone” (Frye, 2000). A liberal education will encourage and develop the liberty to ask good hard questions. It will teach how to find and how to evaluate evidence and facts. It will not ask for mere memorization and regurgitation of what is already known. It will challenge complacency. It will encourage articulate discussion and debate. It will demand clear statements. It will examine and evaluate multiple perspectives. It will discourage narrow mindedness. And it will encourage the liberally educated person to imagine and to envision the world as it is, even in areas where that person has no direct experience, and to imagine the world as it could be.
For me, someone who has no direct experience of genocide, it requires that I step out of my privilege and comfort and step into a different world. And it challenges me to picture how that world could be different.
It seems to me then that the problem of Genocide can best be addressed by people with a liberal education. These are people who can imagine an existence that is different than their own. Liberally educated people can picture themselves in different times and places. They can picture genocide and they can imagine how things could be different. And they can articulate their views, make their cases with good command of the evidence, and they can act on their insight and imagination. They will be, as Northrop Frye said, “very dissatisfied” and, at the same time, “unable to leave it alone.”
A liberal education of this type is not simply a breadth of learning or a comfortable acquaintance with a well-established canon of knowledge from the time. Germany was a well-educated nation at the time of World War II. The German people had made significant contributions in Literature, Medicine, Science, Technology, and the Arts. And yet, many Germans did not apply their active critical imaginations to see the full implications of Hitler’s regime, its policies, and its practices. The classical education of nineteenth and early twentieth century Germany was not a liberal education of the kind I have described here.
So, as part of its mandate to provide students with a Liberal Education, the University of Lethbridge is presenting this fall a special topics course on the Problem of Genocide. It will be offered as a collaboration of the Faculty of Fine Arts, represented by Peter Visentin of the Department of Music, and the Faculty of Arts and Science, represented by myself, the Coordinator of Liberal Education. This course will require students to use their liberty and challenge them to apply their imaginations to the problem of Genocide in the ways I have just described.
In addition and in conjunction with the course, we will be hosting a colloquium October 27, 28, and 29 that will bring to the University of Lethbridge international scholars working on the subject of Genocide. The colloquium will coincide with art exhibitions, drama, and musical performances. The result will be a concentration of intellectual discourse on Genocide this fall.
One of the major pillars of the Liberal Education mandate at the University is expressed in what is called the “General Liberal Education Requirement.” This is a breadth requirement that encourages students to take a number of courses in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and fine arts, no matter what their major or program of studies. The aim is to expose students to a variety of disciplinary perspectives and approaches so that they can, at a minimum, appreciate the diversity of methods and views present within the academic community.
The breadth requirement is not intended to produce someone skilled at Trivial Pursuit or someone who knows the established canon of knowledge. Rather the aim is to give students an opportunity to integrate their breadth of learning and to encourage them to realize that there are connections between the disciplines. From the breadth requirement we hope that students see that what they study in Sociology connects with what they examine in Political Science, Philosophy, or Anthropology and that these disciplines are also relevant to what they study in Biology, Psychology, or Mathematics.
A Liberal Education suggests that few problems can be explained or solved from one narrow disciplinary approach. It suggests, instead, that most problems are multi-faceted and that multiple views and approaches are necessary to achieve a full understanding and to begin to work on solutions.
This is exactly the approach that we are taking in the Problem of Genocide course. Genocide is not a single-sided problem. It requires imaginative exploration and understanding from multiple perspectives if there is any hope for imaging how the world could be different or how we can imagine how to change this persistent problem.
The course will meet weekly. We are still arranging all of the lecturers but we expect faculty from across the campus will contribute to the course. We will need to begin to interrogate this topic from multiple perspectives if we hope to begin to understand, to begin to imagine the problem, the students, most - if not all- of whom will have - like me - no direct personal experience of warfare or Genocide.
The exercise of imagination must begin with questions. Why does Genocide persist? We could begin by asking what is the nature of humanity? We might approach this question from a philosophical perspective. Do we - each and every human being - have in common an essential core identity? Or are each of us completely unique and distinct? These are philosophical questions which have been considered and debated since the days of Plato and Aristotle. Our examination of Genocide must include a philosophical component.
There may be biological implications here as well and perhaps neurological ones. If genocidal acts are part of human nature, is there then, for example, a genetic predisposition for genocide? Is there a good evolutionary reason why we are able to kill other humans? Is genocide about survival of the species? What evidence do we have that it is . . . or that it isn’t?
If there is a biological foundation to acts of genocide, what are the implications of this for what we do about it? If Genocide depends more on particular situations and circumstances, then we will need to take an historical perspectives on the topic. When have genocides occurred? What were the circumstances which accompanied or which precipitated genocide? Is it possible to generalize about the circumstances which may lead to genocidal acts? If so, again, what should we do about these circumstances.
Since genocide involves groups of people, it can easily be examined from the perspectives of the social sciences. Anthropology might ask, how is group identity defined and maintained symbolically? How are markers of one’s group allegiances manipulated in genocidal situations? A sociologist or a geographer might ask about the demographic aspects. Do groups need to be particular sizes and motivated by particular ideologies in order for genocides to occur? What political systems seem to generate genocide? How is power a factor? Who is fighting for power? Why do they want that power? Are there economic factors? Is the root of genocidal conflicts a desire for one group to control and extract greater economic resources than another group?
We might also consider the topic from the perspective of Women’s Studies and gender. Women are often victimized horribly in genocides with mass rape and other atrocities targeting women in particular. What are the gendered aspects of genocide?
Religious Studies can provide yet another perspective and more questions. Are their particular systems of belief or religious traditions that are implicated in genocides? What is the history of the religious traditions that are involved? How does the discourse that generates acts of genocide use the languages of different religions? What are religious responses to Genocide?
From religion it is a short step to Theological, Moral, and Ethical questions. If a religion portrays a God who is good, then why does something as evil as Genocide occur? If God created humans, then why do humans behave this way? What theological responses are there to Genocide? How does one respond ethically when Genocide does occur? What is the moral obligation of those who are not directly involved?
Finally, the Arts can contribute yet another perspective on the topic. Artists working in Literature, Music, Drama, and Painting, Sculpture, and Photography have all added their voices to those who have used imagination to remember and to examine Genocide. How do the Arts challenge and inspire our imaginations to experience and to envision something which we might find unimaginable? How do the Arts keep the memories alive of those who have died in Genocides? How do the Arts challenge us to see the world differently?
I should note here, that in conjunction with the colloquium at the end of October, there will be a performance of music composed in Terezenstadt, one of the Nazi death camps. I expect this will be a moving experience for all involved. As well, the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery is arranging an exhibition of images and objects relating to the Holocaust.
These questions I’ve put forward are only a few of the questions that can be asked but I think they illustrate that multiple perspectives must be applied to an examination of this topic. If one approaches genocide from a single perspective only, one will necessarily limit his or her understanding. One must be able to picture, to imagine, from a variety of perspectives such as, for example, philosophy, biology, sociology, political science, anthropology, women’s studies, religious studies, theology, ethics, and the fine arts.
Finally, once the questions have been asked, the answers sought, and the evidence examined, one must integrate these views into a coherent picture. One must weigh and balance the strengths and weaknesses of each of the perspectives and bring them together. Imagination, imaginari, ‘picturing oneself,’is required. One must be able to imagine beyond the scope of one’s own experience. One must be able to see the horrible reality of genocide. One must be able to articulate the vision, to express it clearly and effectively. In the Genocide course we will be asking students to produce synthetic projects, academic papers or academic posters, that will present their integrated views on genocide or on specific genocidal events.
Earlier this Spring Roméo Dallaire was honoured in Ottawa with the 25th Pearson Peace Medal. In his brief acceptance speech Senator Dallaire said it was his duty to keep the memory of the Rwandan genocide alive and to remind the world of the ongoing atrocities happening in Sudan. He suggested that young Canadians are looking for Canada to “be the country that the world expects us to be - the leader in human rights” (CBC News, 2005). I feel that this course and our liberal education approach can help educate young Canadians who, not only look to Canada as a leader in human rights, but who may be able to contribute themselves to Canada taking that role.
Our liberal education approach will encourage students to view the problem of Genocide from multiple perspectives. It will encourage in them a liberty of imagination. We will encourage them to actively imagine what they have no experience of, to picture themselves in a very different world, in a world of genocide. We will present views on genocide from different disciplinary perspectives, encouraging them to see the problem from multiple perspectives. And we will encourage them to integrate their views. My hope is that perhaps we can encourage the liberated imagination that will better understand the problem of Genocide and, perhaps, be able to imagine how to liberate us all from this ‘odious scourge.’
Thank you.
CBC News. (2005). "Dallaire honoured with peace medal." (Http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/03/09/pearson-dallaire. Retrieved March 9, 2005)
Frye, N. (2000). "A liberal education." (Originally published in Canadian Forum 25 (Sept. 1945): 134–5 and 25 (Oct. 1945): 162–4). In J. O’Grady & G. French (eds), Northrop Frye’s writings on education (Collected works of Northrop Frye, Vol. 7). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
United Nations. (1951). Convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. New York: Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. (Http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm. Retrieved May 26,2005)
Yale University. (2004). Cambodian Genocide Program. New Haven, CT. (Http://www.yale.edu/cgp. Retrieved May 17,2005)