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The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) is an international non-partisan organization that seeks to further research and teaching about the nature, causes, and consequences of genocide, including the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust,[1] the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Bangladesh, Sudan, and other nations. The IAGS also advances policy studies on the prevention of genocide.[2][3][4][5][6] The association's members consider comparative research, case studies, links between genocide and other human rights violations, predictive models for prevention of genocide, and tribunals and courts for the punishment of genocide. The organization's membership includes academics, anti-genocide activists, artists, genocide survivors, journalists, jurists, and public policy makers. Membership is open to interested persons worldwide.
The origins of the IAGS go back to the early 1980s. At this time, a small group of scholars and teachers were using a comparative framework to study genocide. Leo Kuper published his seminal book Genocide[14] in 1980 and Helen Fein published Accounting for Genocide[15] in 1979.
Israel Charny organized the first conference on the comparative analysis of genocide in Jerusalem in 1982. The Institute for the Study of Genocide was founded in New York in 1982 by Helen Fein. Gregory Stanton founded The Cambodian Genocide Project in 1982 to bring Khmer Rouge leaders to justice. It became part of Genocide Watch in 1999.
These early genocide scholars, a number of whom began with study of the Holocaust, were attacked by other scholars who insisted on the "uniqueness" of the Holocaust.
The pioneers in genocide studies also confronted institutional pressures. For example, it was a challenge to get platforms in traditional conferences such as the American Historical Association, the International Studies Association, the American Sociological Association, etc.
Traditional academic disciplines did not find room for the interdisciplinary nature of genocide studies, so universities seldom had faculty positions for genocide scholars.
However, what had been a marginalized area of study became one of urgent interest and scholarship as a response to the genocides in Rwanda and the Balkans in 1994 and 1995.
The Association of Genocide Scholars
The idea for an organization of genocide scholars grew out of a meeting between Israel Charny, Helen Fein, Robert Melson and Roger Smith at the Remembering for the Future Two conference, held at Humboldt University in Berlin in 1994. With over 500 persons in attendance and numerous panels and presentations, there was only one three-hour session on the comparative study of genocide. Hence, there was discussion of the need to create an organization that focused on the study and prevention of genocide.
The Association of Genocide Scholars (AGS) was established in 1994. During this initial period, the AGS shared a website and affiliation with the Institute for the Study of Genocide.
The organization's first conference was held in 1995 at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, US, with about 45 persons attending. Helen Fein served as the association's first President.
Subsequent biennial conferences were held at Concordia University (Montreal) in 1997, the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1999, and the University of Minnesota in 2001.
With the rapid growth and global interest in genocide studies, a number of scholars pushed for a more international perspective and argued that conferences should be held outside North America. The organization revised its by-laws in 2001 and was renamed the International Association of Genocide Scholars. The revised bylaws provided that at least one officer be from outside North America, and that biennial conferences regularly be held outside North America.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars
The IAGS conference at the University of Galway, Ireland in 2003 was the first held outside North America. There were over 200 participants, with a significant increase in participation by European scholars. The increase also reflected growing scholarship in comparative genocide studies.
In 2005, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, hosted the IAGS conference. Israel Charny was elected president.
In 2006, the IAGS, in partnership with the Zoryan Institute, an Armenian organization in Toronto, Canada, began publication of Genocide Studies and Prevention. It became an on-line publication, free to all, in 2012. At that time, the Zoryan Institute withdrew its co-sponsorship of the IAGS Journal in favor of publishing its own journal.
In 2007, Gregory Stanton became President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. Stanton incorporated the IAGS and obtained its non-profit status. The IAGS launched the organization's listserv and website and revised its bylaws. Its financial practices were reformed.
The 2007 IAGS biennial conference was held in Sarajevo, Bosnia. It was the first IAGS conference to be held in a country that had recently experienced genocide, with major participation from genocide survivors in their own language. Over 500 people attended the conference, including many participants from Bosnia, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
The 2009 IAGS conference was held at George Mason University, Virginia, US.
The association held its first conference in South America in 2011 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It included over 300 participants, a significant number of whom were from Argentina and other Latin American countries.
The 2013 IAGS conference was held in Siena, Italy.
In 2014 the IAGS held a mid-term conference at the University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It was the first conference to focus on the genocide of Native Americans. It included sessions with these First Peoples on their own land.
The 2015 IAGS Biennial Meeting held in Yerevan, Armenia, focused on the Armenian genocide.
The 2017 conference in Brisbane, Australia, focused on the genocide of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia.
The 2019 IAGS conference was held in Cambodia. It focused on the Cambodian genocide and other Asian genocides and included significant participation from Cambodians. It was the first IAGS conference held in Asia.
The 2021 IAGS conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was hosted by the University of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It focused on the risks of conflicts and genocide that may be related to environmental destruction, climate change, and the world's population explosion.
The 2023 IAGS conference was scheduled to be held in person and virtually at the University of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.[citation needed]
Presidents
The following persons are or have been president of the association::
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part.
Vahakn Norair Dadrian was an Armenian-American sociologist and historian, born in Turkey, professor of sociology, historian, and an expert on the Armenian genocide.
Dr. James E. Waller is a widely recognized scholar in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies, and the inaugural Cohen Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College located in Keene, New Hampshire.
Leo Kuper was a South African sociologist specialising in the study of genocide.
Gregory H. Stanton is the former research professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention at the George Mason University in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. He is best known for his work in the area of genocide studies. He is the founder and president of Genocide Watch, the founder and director of the Cambodian Genocide Project, and the Chair of the Alliance Against Genocide. From 2007 to 2009 he was the president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
The Journal of Genocide Research is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering studies of genocide. Established in 1999, for the first six years it was not peer-reviewed. Since December 2005, it is the official journal of the International Network of Genocide Scholars. Previous editors have been Henry R. Huttenbach, Dominik J. Schaller, and Jürgen Zimmerer. The journal is abstracted and indexed in Political Science Abstracts, Historical Abstracts, and America: History and Life. As of 2022, the journal is published by Routledge and the editor-in-chief is A. Dirk Moses.
Robert Melson is professor emeritus of political science and a member of the Jewish studies program at Purdue University. From 2003 to 2005, he was the President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS). In 2006 and 2007, he was the Cathy Cohen-Lasry Distinguished Professor in the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts.
Genocide definitions include many scholarly and international legal definitions of genocide, a word coined with genos and an English suffix -cide by Raphael Lemkin in 1944; however, the precise etymology of the word is a compound of the ancient Greek word γένος or Latin word gēns and the Latin word caedō. While there are various definitions of the term, almost all international bodies of law officially adjudicate the crime of genocide pursuant to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG).
Israel W. Charny is an Israeli psychologist and genocide scholar. He is the editor of two-volume Encyclopedia of Genocide, and executive director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem.
The institute on the Holocaust and Genocide was founded in Jerusalem, in 1979, by Israeli scholars Israel W. Charny, Shamai Davidson and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel.
Samuel Totten is an American professor of history noted for his scholarship on genocide. Totten was a distinguished professor at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville where he taught from 1987 to 2012 and served as the chief editor of the journal Genocide Studies and Prevention. He is a Member of the Council of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem.
Barbara Harff is professor of political science emerita at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. In 2003 and again in 2005 she was a distinguished visiting professor at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Her research focuses on the causes, risks, and prevention of genocidal violence.
The ten stages of genocide, formerly the eight stages of genocide, is an academic tool and a policy model which was created by Gregory Stanton, the founding president of Genocide Watch, in order to explain how genocides occur. The stages of genocide are not linear, and as a result, several of them may occur simultaneously. Stanton's stages are a conceptual model with no real-world sampling for analyzing the events and processes that lead to genocides, and they are also a model for determining preventative measures.
The assessment of risk factors for genocide is an upstream mechanism for genocide prevention. The goal is to apply an assessment of risk factors to improve the predictive capability of the international community before the killing begins, and prevent it. There may be many warning signs that a country may be leaning in the direction of a future genocide. If signs are presented, the international community takes notes of them and watches over the countries that have a higher risk. Many different scholars, and international groups, have come up with different factors that they think should be considered while examining whether a nation is at risk or not. One predominant scholar in the field James Waller came up with his own four categories of risk factors: governance, conflict history, economic conditions, and social fragmentation.
Prevention of genocide is any action that works toward averting future genocides. Genocides take a lot of planning, resources, and involved parties to carry out, they do not just happen instantaneously. Scholars in the field of genocide studies have identified a set of widely agreed upon risk factors that make a country or social group more at risk of carrying out a genocide, which include a wide range of political and cultural factors that create a context in which genocide is more likely, such as political upheaval or regime change, as well as psychological phenomena that can be manipulated and taken advantage of in large groups of people, like conformity and cognitive dissonance. Genocide prevention depends heavily on the knowledge and surveillance of these risk factors, as well as the identification of early warning signs of genocide beginning to occur.
Genocide studies is an academic field of study that researches genocide. Genocide became a field of study in the mid-1940s, with the work of Raphael Lemkin, who coined genocide and started genocide research, and its primary subjects were the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust; the Holocaust was the primary subject matter of genocide studies, starting off as a side field of Holocaust studies, and the field received an extra impetus in the 1990s, when the Rwandan genocide occurred. It received further attraction in the 2010s through the formation of a gender field.
War and genocide studies is an interdisciplinary subject that identifies and analyzes the relationship between war and genocide, as well as the structural foundations of associated conflicts. Disciplines involved may include political science, geography, economics, sociology, international relations, and history.
Bibliography of the Armenian genocide is a list of books about the Armenian genocide:
The International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide was the first major conference in the field of genocide studies, held in Tel Aviv on 20–24 June 1982. It was organized by Israel Charny, Elie Wiesel, Shamai Davidson, and their Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, founded in 1979. The conference's objective was to further the understanding and prevention of all genocides; it marked the shift from viewing genocide as an irrational phenomenon to one that could be studied and understood.
Below is an outline of articles on the academic field of genocide studies and subjects closely and directly related to the field of genocide studies; this is not an outline of acts or events related to genocide or topics loosely or sometimes related to the field of genocide studies. The Event outlines section contains links to outlines of acts of genocide.
References
↑ "IAGS". Homepage. International Association of Genocide Scholars: History. Archived from the original on 11 September 2017. Retrieved 21 April 2017.
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