Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Over the span of approximately 100 days in the spring of 1994, members of the Tutsi ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were systematically killed by Hutu militias. While the Rwandan Constitution states that over 1 million people were killed, scholarly estimates suggest between 500,000 and 662,000 Tutsi died.  The genocide was marked by extreme violence, with victims often murdered by neighbors, and widespread sexual violence.  By the time the Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front gained control of the country through a military offensive in early July, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were dead and 2 million refugees (mainly Hutus) fled Rwanda, exacerbating what had already become a full-blown humanitarian crisis.

April 7^th is honored annually as the Day of Remembrance, or Genocide Against the Tutsi Memorial Day – this year marking the 32^nd annual commemoration which honors of all those whose lives were lost or forever changed by the genocide in Rwanda. In his remarks, Professor Peter Uvin will provide historical context and discuss lessons learned from this tragic era of Rwanda’s history and give insights into the country’s post-conflict recovery and healing.  Professor Uvin is a Belgian-born American political scientist and Professor of government and international relations at CMC where he has also held positions as the Vice President for academic affairs and the Dean of Faculty. He is the author of four books, including Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda, which won the Herskovits Prize of the African Studies Association in 1999.

In addition to his focus on Rwanda, Professor Uvin’s other areas of expertise include Burundi, conflict resolution, international development, food policy, human rights, and NGO scaling up.  Uvin earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.  He was the Henry Leir Professor in Humanitarian Studies at Tufts University (2000), and academic dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts (2007-2013) and a Guggenheim Fellow in 2006.  In 2013 he was hired by Amherst College as its first provost before joining the CMC faculty in 2015.

Professor Uvin’s talk is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at CMC.