IF YOU GO

What: Peter Balakian

Where: Winnick Hillel Center

When: Today, 4 p.m.

How much: Free

The first annual Genocide Awareness Week will begin Monday with a lecture by award-winning author Peter Balakian, called “The Armenian Genocide and Modernity.”

Balakian, a professor of the humanities and English and director of creative writing at Colgate University, will use his lecture to explain how the Armenian genocide is still an unresolved issue.

The lecture is on Monday at 4 p.m. in the Winnick Hillel Center. Balakian was chosen to speak because he is one of the foremost scholars on the Armenian genocide, said Alan Goldberg, co-director of Syracuse University’s regional genocide and holocaust initiative.

Goldberg said inviting Balakian to speak on the Armenian genocide is important due to the massacre’s historical importance and continued effect. Turkey has not been granted membership to the European Union and will not be unless the country acknowledges the mass killings of Armenians in 1915-18 as genocide.

Balakian appeared on “60 Minutes” in February to discuss the Armenian massacre. His memoir, “Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenia Past,” won the 1998 PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for the Art of the Memoir and the New Jersey Council for the Humanities Book Award and was a New York Times Best Book of the Year. He is also author of “The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response,” winner of the 2005 Raphael Lemkin Prize, a New York Times Notable Book and a New York Times best-seller.

The Regional Genocide and Holocaust Initiative is a co-sponsor of the week’s activities. The week will include a mixture of speakers, panel discussions and film screenings to educate the SU community on genocide and ethnic violence issues. Balakian’s lecture is one of many that will commemorate violence that has occurred throughout the world, including genocides in Armenia, Bosnia, Darfur and Cambodia.

“We forget that every act begins with one. Every act of heroism begins with one, and every act of terrorism begins with one,” Goldberg said. “That’s what I want people to recall. Everything begins with one. And we talk about the Holocaust as 6 billion, 11 million, but you know what it is? It’s one plus one plus one.”

This is the first time the SU community has seen anything of this magnitude organized by STAND, the student anti-genocide group on campus, said Rebecca Chad, president of STAND and a senior international relations and Middle Eastern studies major.

“Everything starts with awareness, and we’re not expecting people to go out and travel to the Congo or become experts on what’s going on in Burma or Darfur or something,” Chad said. “We just hope that people will know – know what’s going on because that’s one of the most important things about being a citizen in this country and this world.”

The group has been working since November to gather speakers in the anti-genocide community, to schedule a variety of film screenings and to collaborate with other students and local organizations for the event.

“We want to make sure that we reach out to people and inspire them so that they know that they as citizens of a democracy can actually have voices and push the government for change,” Chad said.

A reception on Friday will encourage students to become active against the abuse of minerals in Congo mines by contacting Congress and asking to pass legislation that will hold companies accountable for the minerals used in electronics.

“In light of the events of the Holocaust, there’s this whole cry for ‘Never again,’ and things are happening again,” Chad said.

As part of the awareness week, Shoshana Torn, Israel cultural vice president on Hillel’s student executive board and a freshman art history major, organized Sunday nightÕs Holocaust memorial service at Hendricks Chapel as a commemorative effort. The night included performances by students who had visited Israel or Poland and have seen the effects of the Holocaust, Torn said.

Torn said she was educated early on about the Holocaust but recognizes others might not be as aware. She worked with STAND to coincide the Holocaust remembrance activities with Genocide Awareness Week.

“The Holocaust is something that, yes, happened 67 years ago, but it still relates to us today,” Torn said about the continuing violence happening in foreign nations.

Emily Willard, vice president of STAND and a senior policy studies and international relations major, also said part of Genocide Awareness Week was reminding the community that ethnic violence is not a thing of the past.

“Our main goal is to educate about genocide and to remember that they’re not issues that have only occurred in the past and that’s why we wanted to pair it during Holocaust Remembrance Week,” Willard said. ‘This isn’t something that has happened only in the past, this is still occurring and we can all do something about it.”

The week will involve the local Congolese community through a performance Wednesday night by a motivational rapper and expert on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Omekongo Dibinga.

“The hope is that we educate our peers and our community and our professors and our elder community members about what’s going on,” Willard said, “and following that, provide them with resources with more information where they can take a next step.”

Published on April 11, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Dara: dkmcbrid@syr.edu | @daramcbride