The Warren and Spector/Warren Fellowship for Future Teachers Public Lecture with Dr. James Waller: “Implications of COVID-19 for Atrocity Prevention”

While COVID-19’s impact continues on a global scale – economically, socially, politically, and existentially – it will be particularly felt in deeply divided, fragile, conflict-prone, or at-risk societies.  In such societies, it is absolutely vital that policy measures be taken for preventive action before risk escalates to the point of mass atrocity.  This presentation will review some of those pressure points related to governance, economic conditions, and social fragmentation.  The pandemic, and its potential to serve as a trigger for mass violence, makes our shared work of atrocity prevention more urgent than ever.

Dr. James Waller is Cohen Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College (NH), home to the nation’s only undergraduate major in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.  He also serves as Director of Academic Programs for the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, a leading international NGO in the field.  He is the author of six books, most notably Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Atrocity (Oxford University Press, 2007). His newest book, due out later this year from Oxford University Press, is A Troubled Sleep: Risk and Resilience in Contemporary Northern Ireland.