Devastating man-made crises such as pandemics and environmental disasters have, until recently, mostly been the concern of the natural sciences. Last week, however, two dozen genocide scholars and human rights practitioners from around the globe — two of whom are affiliated with Clark’s Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies — released a statement published on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), urging scholars in their field to recognize the catastrophic impact of climate change through the lens of genocide. Read the statement on the Strassler Center website.

Clark’s own Taner Akçam, professor of history and Robert Aram, Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marian Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies, was behind the call for this urgent “paradigm shift” in our understanding of the effects of climate change; Akçam said he began thinking about the need for genocide scholars to consider the connection to the climate crisis last March when the pandemic hit with devastating impact on the most marginalized communities. Akçam got in touch with the University of Southampton’s Mark Levene, a  scholar of both genocide and anthropogenic climate change who launched a similar initiative in 2005, and the two began working on a public call to action.

Thomas Kühne, Strassler Professor of Holocaust History and director of the Center, was quick to endorse the statement, and stated the shift “marks an important development in our understanding of mass atrocities on a global scale.”

Kühne said that, since its inception, the Strassler Center has pursued complex and comprehensive approaches to genocide studies in order to train activists and practitioners who are committed to prevent and cope with the consequences of mass atrocities.  In 2019, Kühne organized a symposium, Genocide. Ecocide. Climate catastrophe. Naming it, Owning it, Going from here, in collaboration with A new Earth conversation, a campuswide climate initiative at Clark, that addressed genocidal implications of human-created planetary destabilization.

The scholars are already taking steps to ensure continued programming on climate and genocide; Akçam is securing scholars in the field to speak at his seminar this fall and Kühne confirmed that the Center is in the process of adding faculty whose scholarly focus is on past and ongoing mass violence around the globe.

“We couldn’t be more grateful to Taner Akçam, a role model of combining cutting-edge scholarship on the Armenian genocide with his fearless fight against genocide denialism, for now taking the lead in drawing attention to the genocidal implications of climate change, the need for rethinking our concepts of complicity and responsibility, and the quest for new curricula that will eventually actualize Clark’s commitment to agendas of local, national, and global importance,” wrote Kühne.