“MODERN GENOCIDE IN RWANDA”

TOPIC OF LECTURE AT WORCESTER STATE COLLEGE

(Worcester, MA – March 17, 2003) “Modern Genocide in Rwanda: Revolution, War, and Mass Murder in an African State” will be presented by Professor Robert Melson of the Political Science Department at Purdue University. The lecture will take place from 9:30 – 10:20 a.m. on Monday, March 24, 2003, in the Blue Lounge of the Student Center at Worcester State College.

Robert Melson is a professor of political science and former acting director of the Jewish Studies Program at Purdue University in Indiana. He is also the current First Vice-President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, an organization he co-founded. He is an internationally respected scholar who has written several pieces on ethnic conflict and genocide including “False Papers: Deception and Survival in the Holocaust,” a story of his and his family’s survival during the Holocaust. This book was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award for 2001.

Other works include, “Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust,” which won the international Dutch “Interdisciplinary Program of Research on the Root Causes of Human Rights Violation” Award in Human Rights for 1993 and “Nigeria: Modernization and the Politics of Communalism,” co-written with Howard Wolpe. Professor Melson has also held positions as Research Associate at the Harry S. Truman Institute of the Hebrew University, as Research Fellow at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, and at the Center for International Studies at MIT.

The event is being sponsored by the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Worcester State College and is free and open to the public. For more information, please call 508-929-8612.

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