Mass. Ph.D. program explores genocide psychology

BOB SALSBERG
May 15, 2010

WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) – As a clinical psychologist, Cristina Andriani
counseled victims of physical and sexual abuse, Vietnam War veterans and
cult survivors. As a doctoral candidate, her understanding of trauma is
expanding globally as she tries to unravel the psychological underpinnings
of genocide.

The first student in what Clark University in Worcester, Mass., calls the
first postgraduate program of its kind in the world, Andriani is researching
the deeper mysteries behind some of mankind’s most horrifying atrocities of
the last century, from the perspectives of both the tormentor and the
tormented.

While the political and historical aspects of the Holocaust and other mass
killings have been extensively researched, scholars still ask: What
ultimately leads one group of humans to so thoroughly and so brutally
annihilate another group of humans? And what are the consequences for the
survivors – not only for the generation that experienced genocide, but for
their descendants?

"I look at some of the psychology work and it lacks history, and I look at
some of the history work done on genocide and it lacks the psychological
backing," said Andriani, 34, a U.S. citizen who grew up in Switzerland. "So
I think the marriage of the two really makes a lot of sense."

It’s a potentially useful field of study, said John Prendergast, co-chair of
the Washington, D.C.-based Enough Project, an organization focused on ending
genocide and other human rights crimes. He points to the psychological
profiles the U.S. government already does on potential terrorists.

"It’s equally important, even more important, to do profiles of those who
would go to the length of committing genocide to maintain power,"
Prendergast said. "Studying the psychological profile of a perpetrator would
enhance the understanding of the tools necessary to stop him."

A liberal arts university of about 3,100 undergraduate and graduate
students, Clark in the 1990s created the Strassler Center for Holocaust and
Genocide Studies, one of the nation’s first academic centers devoted
exclusively to those topics.

Deborah Dwork, a former Yale University professor who helped create the
Strassler Center and remains its director, said she was worried about what
would happen when Holocaust survivors died.

"When memory dies, history must create a bridge to the past," she said.

Dwork’s 1991 book, "Children With A Star," chronicled the experiences of
Jewish children during the Holocaust era. It was dedicated in part to an
aunt who was the only member of the family still in Europe at the time who
survived the Holocaust.

The Holocaust describes the World War II murders of an estimated 6 million
Jews by Nazi Germany. The center also studies events such as the 1994
genocide that claimed the lives of more than 500,000 people in Rwanda, and
the ethnic violence in Sudan’s Darfur region that the U.N. estimates has
left some 300,000 people dead and displaced 2.7 million others since 2003.

The center became the first in the world to offer postgraduate degrees in
Holocaust and genocide studies, Dwork said. The psychology behind genocide
seemed a natural extension of students’ curiosity.

"Our graduate students became increasingly interested in questions about the
psychology of genocide, like ‘what’s up with these perpetrators? What’s with
their psychology?’"

Andriani plans a dissertation on how Holocaust trauma – the raw memories of
the Holocaust among Jews – have influenced the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
That choice was somewhat personal. As a graduate student at Syracuse
University, her favorite professor was Israeli and her best friend
Palestinian.

Alex Meixner, senior advisor for the group Save Darfur, said the program’s
greatest value, "would be its ability to either help in the prevention
process before an emerging crisis can become a full-blown genocide, or help
in the transitional period post-genocide, when most of the fighting stops
but the other affects are still present."

But the success of academic programs such as these largely depend, Meixner
said, on what its students go on to do in the future.

Dwork said that while many graduates of the center move on to teaching and
research positions at other universities, some have also become museum
curators and one now serves as director of the Auschwitz Institute for Peace
and Reconciliation, which conducts genocide-prevention seminars for U.N.
representatives and other global policymakers.
"I want to train a cadre of educated people who will be able to give good
advice at the State Department when facing situations such as in Darfur,"
she said.

Among the other U.S. schools with academic centers devoted to Holocaust and
genocide studies are Keene State College in Keene, N.H., Drew University in
Madison, N.J., and the University of Minnesota.

© 2010 The Associated Press.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress