The Tenth Year of Genocide Studies at Yale

The Tenth Year of Genocide Studies at Yale University

2003-04 Annual Report of the Genocide Studies Program,
Yale Center for International and Area Studies


This year marks the tenth anniversary of Genocide Studies at Yale, since the establishment in December 1994 of the Cambodian Genocide Program (CGP) at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. The Genocide Studies Program (GSP) grew out of the CGP and was formally established at YCIAS in January 1998. It conducts research, seminars and conferences on comparative, interdisciplinary, and policy issues relating to the phenomenon of genocide, and has provided training to researchers from afflicted regions, including Cambodia, Rwanda, and East Timor.

The Genocide Studies Program, which includes the CGP as one of its ongoing projects, is an affiliate of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies and is sponsored by the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School. The GSP holds weekly faculty seminars at Yale’s Institution on Social and Policy Studies and maintains the highly-acclaimed website www.yale.edu/gsp

In November-December 2003, the Genocide Studies Program was the subject of an extended cover story in the Yale Alumni Magazine, entitled “Life After Genocide.” www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/03_11/easttimor.html . The article, written by journalist David J. Case, won an award from the U.S. Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.

The Steering Committee of the GSP comprises:

 Ben Kiernan (A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History, Yale), Director
Professor Dori Laub (Psychiatry,Yale), Deputy Director (Trauma Studies)
                Professor Ivo Banac (History, Yale)
                Professor Kai Erikson (Sociology, Yale)
                Professor Geoffrey Hartman (Comparative Literature, Yale)
                Professor Paula Hyman (History/Judaic Studies, Yale)               
                Professor James C. Scott (Political Science/Anthropology, Yale)
                Professor Jay Winter (History, Yale)
Professor Susan Cook (University of Pretoria, S. Africa)
                Professor Debórah Dwork (Director, Strassler Family Center for
                Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University)
                Dr. Maryam Elahi (Director, Human Rights Program,
Trinity College)




Staff and Consultants

The GSP Deputy Director, Prof. Dori Laub (Yale Department of Psychiatry), served as Acting Director for the calendar year 2003. During that year he led two semesters of weekly seminars, in the spring on “Genocide Today: Field Work and Analysis” (see GSP Annual Report for 2002-03 at www.yale.edu/gsp ), and in the fall, “Genocide and Terrorism: Probing the Mind of the Perpetrator.” Laub also ran a one-day GSP conference on the latter theme in April 2003. In January 2004, GSP Director Prof. Ben Kiernan returned to the program from a year’s research leave, during which he was supported by a grant from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, Inc.

Other GSP staff and consultants in 2003-04 included Barbara Papacoda (Business Manager), Benjamin Madley (research assistant), Michael Appleby (databases), Abraham Parrish (mapping databases), Molly Simpson (website), and Eden Enclona (mapping).

We wish to thank Prof. Gustav Ranis, YCIAS Director from 1996 to 2004, for his strong support for the GSP since its first incubation; and the Institution on Social and Policy Studies for hosting the GSP seminar program since 2001.


Fall 2003 Seminar Series

The theme of the GSP’s fall semester, the twelfth consecutive series of GSP weekly seminars since 1998, was “Genocide and Terrorism.” The aim of this series was to shift our focus to one particular though central aspect of the phenomenon of mass violence -- the mind of the perpetrator – to identify from that perspective commonalities and differences between the phenomena of genocide (the case of Nazi terror in particular) and that of global terrorism. The fall seminar series focussed in depth on specific case studies from a variety of regions and perspectives, from the historical, anthropological, and sociological to the psychological and psychoanalytic.  Twelve guest speakers from all over the U.S. participated, and one speaker studying in Japan. Tsarist Russia, Nazi-occupied Europe, the Middle East, Ireland, WWII Japan, and the U.S. are regions from which case studies of Genocide and Terrorism were drawn. The speakers’ program was as follows (see also www.yale.edu/gsp/past/fall2003.html )

Genocide and Terrorism: Probing the Mind of the Perpetrator
Thursdays, 2.30-4.20 p.m., ISPS conference room, 77 Prospect St., New Haven
September 18 Philip Pomper, History, Wesleyan University
From Russian Revolutionary Terrorism to Soviet State Terror
September 25 Omer Bartov, History, Brown University
Nazi State Terror and Contemporary Global Terrorism: Continuity and Differences
October 2 Rona Fields, Psychologist, Washington D.C.
Terrorism and Martyrdom: The Psychology of Commitment
October 9 Ruth Stein, Psychoanalyst, IPTAR, New York City
Evil as Love and Liberation: The Mind of a Religious Terrorist
October 16 Sue Grand, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis, New York City
Genocide and the Bestial Gesture of Survival
October 23 Wendy Lower, Director, Scholar’s Program, U.S. Holocaust Memorial, Washington D.C.
German Colonialism and Genocide in Africa and Ukraine: A Comparative View From Below
October 30 Afaf Mahfouz, The Washington Psychoanalytic Society
Terrorism Under Anwar Al-Sadat: A Case Study
November 6 Henry Munson, Anthropology, Main University
The Rage of Osama Bin Laden
November 13 Catherinine McNicol Stock, History and American Studies, Connecticut College
Run, Rudolph, Run! -- The Rural Roots of Domestic Terrorism in the U.S.
November 20 Carol Gluck, History Columbia University and
Joachim Bergstrom, History, Tokyo University
The Nanking Massacre: Japanese Perpetrators in WWII
December 6 Jan Gross, Politics New York University
Blinded by Social Distance--the inability to produce a record of killings between Neighbors

Spring 2004 Seminar Series

In the spring semester the GSP followed up with a series of weekly seminars on the theme, “Ten Years after Rwanda: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of Genocide: Anthropology, Demography, Film, History, Law, Poetry, Politics and Psychoanalysis.” This thirteenth interdisciplinary series of weekly GSP seminars on genocide commemorated the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan catastrophe, which began on April 6, 2004, and ended in June 2004. The speakers’ program follows (see also www.yale.edu/gsp/past ):

Ten Years after Rwanda: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of Genocide Anthropology, Demography, Film, History, Law, Poetry, Politics and Psychoanalysis
Spring 2004 GSP seminar series co-sponsored by the YCIAS Council on African Studies
Thursdays, 1:30 - 3:20 PM, ISPS conference room, 77 Prospect St., New Haven
January 29 Ancient and Contemporary Myths of the Rwandan Genocide
Charles Mironko, Anthropology Department, Yale University
February 5 The Political Economy of the Rwandan Genocide
Dr. Philip Verwimp, Fulbright Scholar, University of Leuven, Belgium
Visiting Fellow, Genocide Studies, YCIAS
February 12
3.30-5.00 p.m.
Luce Hall auditorium Trading Women in Southeast Asia.
Documentary film by David Feingold, followed by discussion session with Dr. Feingold (sponsored by the Council on Southeast Asia Studies at YCIAS).
February 19 Atrocity and Poetry: Edmund Spenser and the Massacre at Smerwick (1580)
Dr. Vincent Carey, History, State University of New York, Plattsburgh
February 26 Bringing the Khmer Rouge to Justice: Legal Issues
Payam Akhavan, Visiting Fellow, Genocide Studies Program
March 4 Why Estimate Direct and Indirect Casualties from War?
The Rule of Proportionality and Casualty Estimates
Dr. Beth Osborne Daponte, Senior Research Scholar, ISPS/YCIAS
March 25 The Scottish Highland Clearances: Genocide ?
Kate Smith, University of Glasgow, Visiting Fellow in Genocide Studies
April 1 Holocaust Survivors in Israel: Memory, Trauma and Treatment
Dr. Dori Laub, Deputy Director, Genocide Studies Program
April 8 Remembering Rwanda: Africa in conflict, yesterday and today
Alison Des Forges, research director for African Great Lakes region, Human Rights Watch, author of "Leave None to Tell the Story": Genocide in Rwanda
April 15 New Evidence on the Death Toll of the Rwandan Genocide
Dr. Philip Verwimp, Visiting Fellow, Genocide Studies Program
April 23
Friday,
3.00 p.m.,
Luce Hall auditorium The Flute Player. Documentary on former child soldier Arn Chorn Pond in the Cambodian Genocide
followed by discussion with Arn Chorn Pond
www.pbs.org/pov/pov2003/thefluteplayer
(sponsored by the Council on Southeast Asia Studies at YCIAS).

New GSP Books

In 2003 Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan published their co-edited anthology, The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press). Publishers’ Weekly said the book “can be recommended as a companion to classic titles like Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem” (April 21, 2003).  Choice added: “Kiernan and Gellately have assembled a stellar group of academics to produce a first-rate book usefully balanced between theory and case studies and focusing on the 55 years since the UN genocide convention was adopted.... All of the essays are good; many are excellent… Highly recommended” (January 2004). In a major review article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Roger W. Smith wrote: “If the other books are selective in the cases of genocide they focus upon, The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective, edited by Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan, strives to be comprehensive. It discusses the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and genocides against indigenous peoples in Africa, North America, and Australia, and is particularly strong on its coverage of genocides in the post-1945 period: Indonesia, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Bosnia, Rwanda, East Timor, and Guatemala. The cumulative impact of the book is to demonstrate just how prevalent state-sponsored mass murder has been in the 20th century. Rather than an aberration, genocide has been commonplace, occurring in
most parts of the world.” (July 30, 2004). Cambridge University Press issued a second printing in 2004, and a contract was signed for an Italian translation.

Susan E. Cook, former CGP Director (1999-2001), completed the editing of an anthology of research papers, most of them first presented at various GSP seminars since 1998. YCIAS and the GSP will jointly publish Genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda: New Perspectives in the fall of 2004, coinciding with the tenth anniversary of Genocide Studies at Yale.

A new book researched and written at Yale by former GSP Postdoctoral Fellow Edward Kissi, entitled Revolution and Genocide in the Third World: A Comparative Study of Ethiopia and Cambodia, has been accepted by Lexington Books for publication in 2005.


GSP Projects

Since its foundation in 1998, the Genocide Studies Program has grown to comprise five research projects on various individual cases of genocide. These are:

1. The Cambodian Genocide Program,
2. The Yale East Timor Project,
3. The Rwandan Genocide Project, 
4. The Colonial Genocides Project, and
5. The Holocaust Trauma Project

The GSP website includes detailed up-to-date information on the various research products of each of these projects, at: www.yale.edu/gsp
The Cambodian Genocide Program (CGP), since its foundation at Yale in 1994, has seen remarkable progress towards international legal accountability for the crimes of the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-79). As of mid-2004, a UN-Cambodian genocide tribunal may be finally coming into existence. The CGP continues to maintain and enhance its large multifaceted website which has received four international internet awards (see www.yale.edu/cgp/awards.html ). The CGP site received 825,707 “hits” in the two years to November 30, 2003, averaging nearly 8,000 per week. These included 205, 911 visits to the site’s front page alone, or about 2,000 visitors per week over the period.  Apart from its unique, voluminous databases in English and Khmer, containing 28,000 biographic, bibliographic, and photographic records, the CGP site provides regular updates and a chronology of the UN-Cambodian negotiations for the creation of the tribunal at www.yale.edu/cgp/chron_v3.html and has published the major tribunal documents at www.yale.edu/cgp/news.html and in print in the journal Critical Asian Studies (2002): www.yale.edu/cgp/Cambodia_Docs_Oct16.pdf . The latest CGP report is accessible at www.yale.edu/cgp/CGP2003Report.html
The CGP site’s new Khmer-language home page is now accessible at www.yale.edu/cgp/khmer
Yale’s Sterling Library Southeast Asia Collection now offers full access to a 132-reel microfilm copy of the Khmer-language archives of the Santebal, the former Khmer Rouge Special Branch secret police, a 100,000-page collection located and obtained by the CGP in 1996, and microfilmed by Sterling Library. Copies of the microfilm set have  also been made available for purchase, for $4,620.  Mr. Heng Samnang (MA, Yale, 1996), a Cambodian historian trained by the CGP and Yale History Department, returned from Phnom Penh University’s Department of History for the spring semester of 2004 to complete the cataloguing of Sterling’s other Khmer-language holdings. He will return to Yale again in the fall of 2004.
In 2003, the CGP received two generous donations of collections of Cambodia papers. Prof. Peter Carey of Trinity College, Oxford, donated the papers bequeathed by Mme. Louise Vidaud de Plaud, collected in Cambodia and France from the 1960s to the 1990s. Prof. Milton Leitenberg of University of Maryland, College Park, kindly donated his own papers on Cambodia.
The CGP consults with and provides advice and assistance as requested both to the United Nations Assistance to Khmer Rouge Trials (UNAKRT), of the UN’s Office of Legal Affairs, and to the Royal Government of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge Trial Task Force. In early 2003, Prof. Kiernan met with H.E. Sok An, Senior Minister in Charge of the Council of Ministers of the Royal Government. On November 19, attorney David Hutchinson of the UN Office of Legal Affairs, and Ellen Alradi of the UN Office of Political Affairs visited New Haven for discussions with Kiernan before the UN delegation’s departure for Cambodia in December. Mr. Philippe M.F. Peycam, Director of the Center for Khmer Studies, in Siemreap, Cambodia, visited Yale on October 22, 2003, and discussed future collaboration between the CGP and the Center.
During the summer of 2004, the CGP arranged for Yale History graduate Ethel Higonnet, now a second-year Yale Law School student with relevant experience at the Sierra Leone Special Tribunal and the International Criminal Tribunal on the Former Yugoslavia, to work with the Khmer Rouge Trial Task Force in Phnom Penh.
The Yale East Timor Project: In July 2003, Kiernan visited East Timor. He interviewed President Xanana Gusmao, who had visited Yale in 2001 to deliver a GSP-sponsored lecture before East Timor’s independence the next year. In Dili, Kiernan also attended hearings on the Indonesian invasion, occupation and genocide from 1975-1999. The hearings formed part of a series of consultations and public events conducted by the UN-sponsored Commission on Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR), which is compiling an archive of the country’s tragic experience, to be housed in a newly furbished museum that had been a prison during the Indonesian occupation. In the fall of 2003, Kiernan delivered a submission to the CAVR’s investigation of the events during the occupation period. In 2003-04, he published two articles on the genocide and the East Timorese resistance (see GSP Director’s publications listed below).

The GSP also provided the CAVR library and archive with a number of books and unique documents relating to the Indonesian occupation, including a full set of copies of the press releases of the Campaign for an Independent East Timor (Sydney, Australia) dating from 1974-79. These regular mimeographed press releases were based largely on information contained in broadcasts from East Timor over Radio Maubere, which from December 1975 to December 1978 was the voice of the Fretilin-led armed resistance to the occupation. The broadcasts, mostly in Portuguese, were monitored and audio-taped by CIET in the outback of the Top End of the Northern Territory, Australia. The tapes were then dispatched to Sydney where they were translated, and excerpts published. (These press releases were supplemented by CIET's regular broadsheet East Timor News and Melbourne's Timor Information Service.) In July 2003 Kiernan visited the National Library of Australia (NLA) in Canberra, and subsequently met in Darwin with Mr. Brian Manning, one of those responsible for monitoring and taping Radio Maubere broadcasts in 1975-85. With the cooperation of Mr. David McKnight and NLA librarian Mr. Graeme Powell, and with support from the Jocarno Fund, the GSP made copies of approximately 1,000 pages of the mostly unpublished 1974-79 press releases held in the NLA’s Denis Freney Collection. The copies reached Dili in April 2004. CAVR Special Advisor Patrick Walsh wrote Kiernan on 26 April to inform him that the copies of the Freney papers had arrived safely in Dili: “they’re here which is terrific… many, many thanks for doing them. They'll be organised and housed here for future reference.”

In 2004, the Yale East Timor Project published its East Timor Databases, including extensive biographic and biobliographic records, especially of the mass killings and destruction perpetrated by Indonesian forces and militia in 1999, and a number of maps of killing sites. The East Timor Biographic (TBIO), Bibliographic (TBIB), and Geographic (TGEO) Databases were compiled and made available to the Yale East Timor Project by two Australian academic institutions, the University of New South Wales and Griffith University’s Asia Pacific Research Institute (GAPRI) in Brisbane, Queensland. Base maps for the TGEO mapping data were kindly provided by Associate Professor Lawrence Crissman, Director of The Asia Pacific Spatial Data Project of GAPRI. Hosted on the Yale server by GSP databases consultant Michael Appleby, the East Timor Databases are now accessible for the first time at http://research.yale.edu:8084/etimor

The GSP wishes to thank the Jocarno Fund for consistently generous funding since 2001, which has enabled us to complete these research tasks and assist in the process of documentation, training and reconciliation in East Timor.

The Colonial Genocides Project, launched by the GSP in 2003, includes research on the history of genocides such as those against Australian Aborigines and the inhabitants of (West) Papua in Indonesia since 1965, and comparative research on the phenomenon of colonial genocide. Ben Kiernan and Benjamin Madley continue to write and publish on the Australian cases, among others. Octovianus Mote is preparing detailed databases on the history of Indonesian rule in Papua. Some of the research products of these projects are accessible at www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial

In 2004, Yale History graduate students affiliated with the GSP published back-to-back comparative articles on colonial genocides:

Benjamin Madley, History Department, Yale University, “Patterns of Frontier Genocide, 1803-1910: the Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia,” Journal of Genocide Research 6:2 (June 2004), pp. 167-192.

Ashley Riley Sousa, History Department, Yale University, “‘They will be hunted down like wild beasts and destroyed!’: A Comparative Study of Genocide in California and Tasmania,” Journal of Genocide Research 6:2 (June 2004), pp. 193-209.

The Rwandan Genocide Project’s major initiative in 2003-04 involved Yale’s commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the 1994 genocide. As part of this commemoration, during the spring semester of 2004 the GSP organized four seminars on the Rwandan Genocide, including one by former GSP Associate Director Charles Mironko, two by GSP Visiting Fellow Philip Verwimp, and a guest presentation by acclaimed Human Rights Watch author Alison Des Forges on April 8, two days after the anniversary. In March, Mironko completed and submitted his Yale PhD dissertation on the genocide (see below).

While at the GSP on a Fulbright Fellowship for the spring semester, Philip Verwimp gave various other presentations on Rwanda: at Yale’s Department of Political Science, at the invitation of Prof. Stathis Kalyvas (April 15), and the “Order and Conflict” conference organized by Prof. Kalyvas (April 30-May 1); at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, at the invitation of Prof. Peter Uvin (March 20); at Smith College, at the invitation of Profs. David Newbury and Catherine Newbury (April 20); and the University of Southern Connecticut, invited by Prof. Harvey Feinberg (March 30).

Combining some of the research output of its five regional projects and other sources, the GSP develops and maintains multi-regional, multi-lingual, comparative and thematic Databases www.yale.edu/gsp/databases and Satellite Images and Maps www.yale.edu/gsp/maps


The Holocaust Trauma Project, 2002-04

Since October 2002, under the direction of Prof. Dori Laub, twenty-six video testimonies from psychiatrically-hospitalized Holocaust survivors in Israel have been obtained, following a research protocol approved by Yale University, Beer Yaakov, and Lev Hasharon.

The subjects were drawn from the approximately 100 residents housed in the hostel for Holocaust survivors established in 2000 at the Beer Yaakov Mental Health Center, and from the approximately 100 residents housed in the hostel at Lev Hasharon Mental Health Center. Before these hostels were established, the survivors spent many years in Israeli psychiatric hospitals. This survivor population has an age range of 57-97 years and has severe, chronic mental illness.  From among those suitable for the study, subjects were chosen after screening the patient files to see which survivors meet the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the study, and after obtaining informed consent from the subject and guardian as necessary. We sought the patients with highest and most stable functioning, whose clinical course is least likely to be changed during the course of the study. The inclusion and exclusion criteria were as follows:

Inclusion criteria: victims of Nazi persecution as defined by the Conference on Jewish Claims Against Germany, Inc. (in hiding, ghettos, concentration labor and death camps, etc.), who were at least 3 years old during the time of persecution, and are willing and capable of telling a story, even if only in fragments.

Exclusion criteria: survivors with severe cognitive impairments such as Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia, mutedness, an inability or unwillingness for interpersonal communication, or severe psychotic disorganization that precludes any coherence to a video testimony.

The subjects were recruited by Dr. Mordechai Weiss (clinical co-PI and deputy director of the Beer Yaakov Mental Health Center) and Dr. Boris Finkel (director of the Holocaust Survivors Unit at Lev Hasharon). The 28 subjects were grouped into fourteen matched pairs randomly assigned to be either experimental or control subjects. Pairs were matched according to the subjects’ present mental state (including current forms of experiencing trauma such as paranoia, profound depression, nightmares, experiences of panic or withdrawal), ability to cooperate, and ability to organize their narratives. One member of each pair was randomly designated as experimental (receiving videotestimony intervention in October-November 2002), the other as control (receiving videotestimony intervention after crossover in April 2003).

All participants underwent initial psychiatric and psychological evaluations, using instruments specific for PTSD with psychosis, in an attempt to diagnostically differentiate it from other psychoses like schizophrenia. Measures included the Structured Interview for Disorders of Extreme Stress (SIDES), PTSD symptom scale, Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale, Form 2, (CAPS-2), the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), the Clinical Global Impression (CGI) scale, and the Rorschach test.

On October 28, 2002, Dr. Irit Felsen (an Israeli psychologist who has worked extensively with Holocaust survivors and their children) and Dr. Dori Laub, started the interviewing process for the experimental group in both Beer Yaakov and Lev Hasharon hospitals after the psychological and psychiatric testing had been completed.  Fourteen testimonies were obtained between October 22nd and November 3rd (10 patients were from Beer Yaakov and 4 from Lev-Hasharon), each lasting 1½ to 3 hours.  Planning meetings, summary meetings, as well as meeting with the staff also took place throughout this period of time in order to report findings regarding the patients who had the videotestimony intervention (the experimental group). 

Extensive telephone consultations took place to learn from the first phase (pre-crossover) and prepare for the second, which was planned for the end of March 2003, but had to be postponed to the end of April because of the war in Iraq.  The second phase of the project (psychological evaluation and psychiatric testing of both the experimental and control groups, followed by videotestimony and intervention for the control group) started on April 22, 2003 and lasted until May 2, 2003.  During this period, twelve patients from the control group were interviewed and their testimony videotaped.  (Two patients withdrew their consent at the last moment, so our control group included 12 and not 14 patients as originally planned.)  All together, 26 testimonies have been obtained, 14 experimental and 12 in the control group.  Eight testimonies were obtained in Lev Hasharon (4 in the experimental and 4 in the control group) and 18 testimonies were obtained in Beer-Yaakov (10 testimonies in the experimental and 8 testimonies in the control group). A final round of psychological and psychiatric testing was carried out on the control group four months after videotestimony.  Data and safety reviews were performed after the second and third rounds of evaluation and testing.

The staff at the hospital are viewing the testimonies and are including them in their treatment planning.  Viewings of the testimonies started spontaneously after the first group of videotapes were finished.  In the summer of 2002, a pilot seminar was started with Miriam Rieck (study coordinator) attending in order to view testimonies and train staff as to their use in the treatment of the survivors.  A part-time occupational therapist was hired for the specific purpose of working with the survivors who participated in the study. Interviews with these patients were always conducted by two interviewers and while Dr. Laub participated in every interview, the co-interviewers changed.  In the first group, at the end of October, Dr. Laub and Dr. Felsen were the main interviewers and 6 staff members from Beer-Yaakov supplemented the team.  In the second round of interviews, Dr. Laub was the main interviewer and staff of Beer-Yakov Hospital supplemented the group.  All of the videotestimonies are currently being transcribed into English for further in-depth analysis.

A summary conference to review initial findings and possible complications for the treatment of survivors was held on December 8, 2003 primarily for the staff of the hospitals that are involved.  This was an in-service training to improve the treatment skills of staff who work with survivor populations in the hospitals. A second training retreat for the staff of both hospitals was held on June 16-17, 2004 in Maaleh Hachamisha, Israel. The second day was open to mental health professionals from Israel who work with Holocaust survivors.

Preliminary results indicated 38% of patients meeting criteria for PTSD at their first interview and only 19% at the second interview. There was a significant reduction of functional impairment as well as symptom severity and intensity of all posttraumatic clusters (intrusion, avoidance and hyper arousal) with “avoidance” showing the most reduction.  Ten subjects indicated an improvement of 30% or more in total posttraumatic severity score.  No difference in PANSS, MMSE, SIDES and CGI total scores were noted post-interview or between the 2 pre-interview evaluation batteries in the control group.  Prior to and post-video testimony interview, female subjects showed higher prevalence of PTSD symptomatology. There was an inverse correlation between total CAPS-2 scores and total PANSS scores both at baseline and at follow-up.  The Rorschach indicates that issues regarding severe and extreme trauma experienced many years previously may still be expressed in a profound manner in Rorschach testing and  may be affected by therapeutic interview years after the acute event.

Study observations indicate the clinical benefits of the testimony interview in the alleviation of many post-traumatic symptoms, but not psychosis, in a cohort of psychiatrically ill Holocaust survivors despite the lapse of up to 60 years since the traumatic event and suggest implications for the care and rehabilitation of such a patient subpopulation.



New GSP Grants

The GSP received new grants for special projects in 2003-04. These included a second generous grant from Frederick J. Iseman, Esq. With matching support from YCIAS, this grant enables us to appoint a new GSP Postdoctoral Fellow to research and write a book on comparative genocide and to teach Yale undergraduate and graduate courses on genocide in 2005-07. The new Iseman grant also makes possible additional GSP graduate student dissertation research fellowships, and enables us to continue our seminar and conference program.

In another new grant for 2003-04, the Jocarno Fund renewed its generous support for the East Timor Genocide Documentation Project since the project’s inception in 2001.

The GSP continued work on its mapping grant from the Yale Institute of Biospheric Studies (YIBS), in collaboration with the YIBS Center for Earth Observation, for the creation of satellite mosaic images of the following countries and regions before, during, and after genocide: Cambodia, East Timor, Rwanda, Bosnia, Guatemala, Sudan and West Papua (Indonesia). Many images are now accessible on the enhanced GSP website, at www.yale.edu/gsp/maps



New PhD dissertations completed

In 2003, Philip Verwimp, GSP Visiting Fellow in 1998-99 and 2002-04, completed his PhD dissertation, Development and Genocide in Rwanda: A Political Economy Analysis of Peasants and Power under the Habyarimana Regime. He successfully defended this dissertation at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. GSP Director Ben Kiernan served as one of the members of Dr. Verwimp’s PhD committee. 

GSP Visiting Fellow Kate Smith submitted her dissertation, Kingdom, Power and Glory: media and national identity, to the Department of Political Science, Glasgow University.

The first of four GSP-funded Yale graduate students obtained the Ph.D. degree at the University’s 2003 graduation ceremony. Soner Cagaptay, beneficiary of a GSP Mellon Foundation dissertation fellowship in 2000-01, successfully defended his History dissertation, “Crafting the Turkish Nation: Kemalism and Turkish Nationalism in the 1930s.” Other GSP-funded graduate students with Mellon fellowships have been completing dissertations in Yale’s Departments of Anthropology, Sociology, and Political Science, on topics related to Rwanda, Bosnia, and Burma. In spring 2004, two successfully completed and defended PhD dissertations. These were:

Charles Mironko, former GSP Associate Director: Social and Political Mechanisms of Mass Murder: An Analysis of Perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide, Department of Anthropology, PhD dissertation, submitted March 2004.

Jasmina Besirevic Regan: Ethnic Cleansing in Banja Luka: National Homogenization, Political Repression, and the Emergence of a Bosnian Muslim Refugee Community, Department of Sociology, PhD dissertation, submitted March 2004.





GSP Director’s Activities, 2003-04

Prof. Kiernan spent the calendar year 2003 writing a history of genocide since 1492, to be published by Yale University Press. In the spring semester of 2004, he taught a graduate seminar on “Genocide in History and Theory,” and a junior seminar on Vietnamese History. Apart from his work at the GSP and in the History Department, Kiernan is a Board Member of The Elmau Initiative: An International Task Force to End Genocide (Elmau, Germany), and a member of the Editorial Boards of the academic journals Critical Asian Studies, Journal of Human Rights, Journal of Genocide Research, and Human Rights Review. He served as consultant for the Cambodia exhibit at the Imperial War Museum exhibition on Crimes Against Humanity. He was appointed an honorary Professorial Fellow in the Department of History, University of Melbourne, on 1 January 2004.


GSP Director’s Publications, 2003-04

Books and Monographs

Ben Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, 1930-1975, second edition with a new preface by the author, Yale University Press, 2004.

The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective, co-edited by Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2003.


Articles published by Ben Kiernan, 2003-04

“‘Collateral Damage’ from Cambodia to Iraq,” Antipode 35:5, 2003, pp. 846-55.
www.yale.edu/gsp/publications/02_Kiernan.pdf

“Historical and Political Background to the Conflict in Cambodia, 1945-2002,” in Kai Ambos and Mohamed Othman, eds., New Approaches in International Criminal Justice: Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia (Freiburg im Bresgau: Max Planck Institute for International Criminal Law, 2003), pp. 173-88.

“The First Genocide: Carthage, 146 BC,” Diogenes 203, 2004, pp. 27-39, and “Le premier génocide: Carthage 146 A.C.,” Diogène 203, juillet-septembre 2003, pp. 32-48.
www.yale.edu/gsp/publications/04Kiernan2.html 
Arabic, Spanish and Chinese versions forthcoming.

“The Demography of Genocide in Southeast Asia: The Death Tolls in Cambodia, 1975-79, and East Timor, 1975-80,” Critical Asian Studies 35:4, December 2003, pp. 585-97.
www.yale.edu/gsp/publications/KiernanRevised1.pdf

“War, Genocide, and Resistance in East Timor, 1975-1999: Comparative Reflections on Cambodia,” in Mark Selden and Alvin Y. So, eds., War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century, Lanham, MD, Routledge, 2004, pp. 199-233.
www.yale.edu/gsp/east_timor/03-263_Ch_09.pdf

"«Danys col•laterals» significa persones de carn I ossos," El Contemporani (Barcelona), no. 27 (2003), in Catalan.

“Killing with Intent” (review article on genocide), Melbourne Age, 6 September 2003.

“Interview with Ben Kiernan,” Aztag, Beirut (in Armenian), 10 June 2004, p. 5. Interviewed by Khatchig Mouradian. English version and French excerpts at: www.aztagdaily.com/interviews/kiernan.htm

“Coming to Terms with the Past: Cambodia,” History Today (London), September 2004, pp. 16-19: www.historytoday.com

“The Cambodian Genocide, 1975-1979: A Critical Review,” revised and updated article for new edition of S. Totten, W. Parsons, and I. Charny, eds., Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and First-Person Accounts, forthcoming 2004 (Routledge).



GSP Director’s Public Presentations, 2003-04

“Genocide and Resistance in Cambodia and East Timor,” paper presented at the Sydney University conference on “Genocide and Colonialism,” 18-20 July 2003.

Seventh Freilich Foundation Lecture on Bigotry and Tolerance, “Genocide and Resistance in Cambodia and East Timor,” Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, July 22, 2003.

“The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: Ideology and Violence,” lecture to the Melbourne Irish Studies Seminar, University of Melbourne, August 19, 2003. 

“Genocide and Resistance in Cambodia and East Timor,” seminar presentation to the Monash University Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Melbourne, August 21, 2003.

“Cambodia and Theories of Nationalism”, prepared commentary at the colloquium of the Comparative Research Network, sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies, Luce Hall, October 4, 2003.

“The Cambodian Genocide,” lecture at Brandeis University for the Holocaust Remembrance Week opening ceremony of “Surviving and Sharing: The Cambodian Holocaust,” at the invitation of Brandeis Hillel/Southeast Asia Club, November 3, 2003.

Presentation to the External Advisory Board of the Yale Institute of Biospheric Studies, New Haven Lawn Club, October 23, 2003.

“What We Can Learn from Indonesian Islam,” commentary at the conference on The Future of Secularism, Yale Council on South Asian Studies, March 27, 2004.

“The Cambodian and Rwandan Genocides,” presentation to Year 12 classes at Hamden High School, 2 April 2004.

“The Cambodian Genocide,” lecture presentation in a panel on “The United States and Human Rights in Asia,” at the Northwestern University Conference on Human Rights, “Human Rights and American Responsibility,” Evanston, April 16, 2004.

“Preventing Genocide: Obligations of the International Community,” panel presentation at the Foreign Policy Association Town Hall Meeting, “Transatlantic Perspectives on Sovereignty and Intervention,” Yale Law School, April 29, 2004.



GSP Deputy Director’s Publications, 2003-04

Dori Laub and Susanna Lee, “Thanatos and Massive Psychic Trauma,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, No. 2, 2003.

Dori Laub, September 11, 2001,  “An Event Without a Voice” in “Trauma at Home”  Judith Greenberg, ed., University of Nebraska Press, 2003.

Dori Laub, “Kann die Psychoanalyse dazu beitragen, den Volkermord historisch besser zu verstehen?” (“Can Psychoanalysts Enhance Historical Understanding of Genocide”)  Psyche-Z. Psychoanal 57, 2003.



GSP Deputy Director’s Public Lectures, 2003-04

December 14, 2003 “The Voids of Memory; PTSD Psychosis in the Videotestimonies of Chronically Hospitalized Holocaust Survivors in Psychiatric Institutions in Israel.” Lecture presented at the IPA Trauma Work Group, Vienna.

March 11, 2004 “Traumatic Shutdown of Narrative and Symbolization and its Countertransference Implifications: Psychotic Deficit or Defensive Struggle ?” Presented at “Working at the Frontiers,” IPA 43rd Congress in New Orleans, LA

May 5, 2004 “Videotestimonies of Hospitalized Survivors.” Presented at The American Psychiatric Association, Javits Convention Center, New York.

June 11, 2004 “The Perpetrator’s Deadly Inner World:  Psychoanalytic Reflections.” Presented at “Violence or Dialogue: Between Collective Fantasy and Collective Denial,” Interdisciplinary Conference on Terror, Violence and Society in Berlin, Germany.



GSP Visiting Fellows, 2003-04

Dr. Philip Verwimp, Fulbright Scholar (Catholic University, Leuven, Belgium; GSP Fellow in 1989-99 and 2002-04)
Octovianus Mote, Papua, Indonesia (2002-05)
Payam Akhavan (2002-05)
Kate Smith, Glasgow University (2003-04)



2003-04 Publications by GSP Visiting Fellows

Payam Akhavan

 “The International Criminal Court in Context: Mediating the Global and Local in the Age of Accountability”, 97 American Journal of International Law 712 (2003)

“Justice as Aberration: Reflections on the Historical Significance of the International Criminal Court”, 34:2 World Order  51 (2003)

“The Origin and Evolution of Crimes Against Humanity: An Uneasy Encounter Between Positive Law and Moral Outrage”, in Morten Bergsmo (ed.), Human Rights and Criminal Justice for the Downtrodden: Essays in Honour of Asbjørn Eide 3 (2003)

“The situation concerning the Lord’s Resistance Army: Uganda’s submission of the first State referral to the International Criminal Court,” forthcoming in American Journal of International Law (2004)

“International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,” in Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity (Dinah L. Shelton ed.) (forthcoming, 2005)

Reducing Genocide to Law: Definition, Meaning and the Ultimate Crime, forthcoming, Cambridge University Press.


Kate Smith:

“Genocide in Darfur,” The Scotsman, 20 May 2004

“De-humanity - the massacre and persecution of Bambuti pygmies in Congo and the West’s commercial interests in Tantulum,” Scotland on Sunday, 25 July 2004, to be reprinted in New Internationalist and The Economist.

“Guantanamo, Glasgow: Criminalising Asylum Seekers in the British system,” Scotland on Sunday, 1 August 2004.

End of Genocide ?, Praeger, New York, forthcoming 2005 (ISBN 0275984346)

The Highland Clearances: Scotland's Genocide ?, forthcoming, 2006 (co-author).


Philip Verwimp:
“An economic profile of peasant perpetrators of genocide,” accepted for publication in the Journal of Development Economics, 2004.

“Death and Survival during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda,” Population Studies, Vol.58, No.2, 2004, pp. 233-245.

 “What are all the soldiers going to do? Demobilisation, re-integration and employment in Rwanda,” Conflict, Security and Development, 4: 1 April 2004, pp. 39-57 (with Marijke Verpoorten).

“Games in Multiple Arenas and Institutional Design on the eve of the Rwandan genocide,” Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy, web-based journal www.crp.cornell.edu/peps/Journal/Vol10-No1.htm, Cornell University, Winter 2004.



GSP Visiting Fellows, 2004-05

Mr. Octovianus Mote, who is documenting post-1965 human rights abuses in Papua, Indonesia, is a former journalist with the Indonesian newspaper Kompas. After two years as a Visiting Fellow in the Southeast Asia Program he Cornell University, he came to New Haven in September 2002, sponsored by the GSP, the Schell Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School, and the Council on Southeast Asia Studies at YCIAS. Mr. Mote’s YCIAS appointment as a Visiting GSP Fellow has been renewed for a third year.

Mr. Payam Akhavan, former advisor to the Prosecutor to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, currently writing a legal study of genocide, will also continue as a GSP Visiting Fellow for a third year, 2004-05. 

We also welcome a new GSP Visiting Fellow and two Visiting Graduate Assistants of Research:

Dr. Marcello Flores, Professor of Comparative History and Contemporary History at the University of Siena, is Director of the Masters Program in Human Rights and Humanitarian Action there, and editor of the anthology Storia, verita, giustizia: I crimini del XX secolo (Milano, Bruno Mondadori, 2001). He will come to Yale as a GSP Visiting Fellow in April 2005, to work on his research proposal, “Comparing Genocides.”

Holen Sabrina Kahn, who teaches a course entitled “Truthtelling or Mythmaking: Visualizing Resistance, Tales and Testimony” in the Media Cultures Department at the City University of New York, Staten Island, also maintains a practice as a Visual Artist and is creating an exhibit on genocide.

Mr. Taylor Owen, of the Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Norway, will spend the fall semester at the GSP before moving to Oxford University. On October 14 he will present a GSP seminar entitled “Mapping Threats to Human Security in Cambodia,
1969-2004: Measuring, Visualizing and Modeling Vulnerability.”

In the fall of 2004, Ms. Laura Saldivia, of the University of Palermo School of Law, Argentina, a GSP Visiting Fellow in the spring of 2003, will return to Yale for the Law School’s LLM program.

http://www.yale.edu/gsp/GSP_AnnualReport2004.doc