Jerry Fowler, William F. Podlich Distinguished Visitor and the first visiting scholar at The Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights at CMC, will visit the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum on Tuesday, April 17 for a lunch discussion on "Darfur: So Far From Here." The public portion of the program begins at 12:15 p.m.; seating is free, on a first-come basis.
Fowler will address the unfolding crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, which has led to the deaths of more than 400,000 people over the past three years, and the displacement of about 2.5 million civilians forced to flee their homes. Reports also indicate that more than 3.5 million men, women, and children are completely reliant on international aid for survival. Fowler's lecture will focus on the roots of the crisis, the U.S. and international response to date, and the prospects for the future.
Fowler is on leave from his position as the founding staff director of the Committee on Conscience, which guides the genocide prevention efforts of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Darfur has been a particular focus of his international work in genocide issues, and has since stimulated national and international debates about ongoing violence in the region. At the Holocaust Memorial Museum, he organized meetings that resulted in the creation of the first chapter of STAND, an umbrella organization of more than 600 high school and college chapters dedicated to putting an end to genocide, specifically the ongoing genocide in Darfur.
In July 2004, Fowler and Ruth Messinger of American Jewish World Service organized the Darfur Emergency Summit, a meeting that was the genesis of the Save Darfur Coalition: an alliance of more than 170 faith-based, advocacy, and humanitarian organizations.
The coalitions, says Fowler, have been instrumental in raising international awareness of violence in Darfur and elsewhere. For Fowler, the awareness is essential for building pressure for an effective response. "One of the lessons that I take out of studying these issues and working on Darfur," he says, "is that the level of response to genocide and mass violence by governments, including our own, is directly related to how much public outcry there is."
His publications include the essay, Out of that Darkness: Preventing Genocide in the 21st Century, in the 2nd edition of Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views (Routledge, 2004). He also directed the short film, A Good Man in Hell: General Romeo Dallaire and the Rwanda Genocide (2003). Fowler has taught at George Mason University Law School and George Washington University Law School, and has been a scholar-in-residence at American University's summer Human Rights Institute. He is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Princeton University.
His Athenaeum lecture is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights at CMC.