Confronting Evil

Engaging Our Responsibility to Prevent Genocide

James Waller

Waller's analysis is drawn from the author's primary experience in over two decades of work as a teacher, scholar, and activist in the field of genocide studies, including extensive travel to, and research in, post-atrocity societies around the world
Each chapter contextualizes a different genocidal history: the Holocaust, Rwanda, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, South Sudan, and Argentina. Other genocides referenced throughout the text include indigenous genocides in the US, Australia, and Canada; the Armenian Genocide; and the Ukrainian genocide
Provides up-to-date coverage of ongoing conflicts in Sudan, Burma, Syria, the Central African Republic, and Burundi

Confronting Evil

Engaging Our Responsibility to Prevent Genocide

James Waller

Description

While it is true that genocide prevention is not what tends to land on the front pages of national newspapers today, it is what prevents the worst headlines from ever being made. Despite the post-Holocaust consensus that "Never Again" would the world allow civilians to be victims of genocide, the reality is closer to "Again and Again."

As many as 170 million civilians across the world were victims of genocide and mass atrocity in the 20th century. Now that we have entered the 21st century, little light has been brought to that darkness as civilians still find themselves under brutal attack in South Sudan, Burma, Syria, the Central African Republic, Burundi, Iraq, and a score of other countries in the world beset by state fragility and extremist identity politics.

Drawing on over two decades of primary research and scholarship from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, Confronting Evil: Engaging Our Responsibility to Prevent Genocide is grounded in the belief that preventing mass atrocity is an achievable goal, but only if we have the collective will to do so.

This groundbreaking book from one of the foremost leaders in the field presents a fascinating continuum of research-informed strategies to prevent genocide from ever taking place; to prevent further atrocities once genocide is occurring; and to prevent future atrocities once a society has begun to rebuild after genocide.
With remarkable insight, Dr. James Waller challenges each of us to accept our responsibilities as global citizens-in whichever role and place we find ourselves-and to think critically about one of the world's most pressing human rights issues in which there are no sidelines, only sides.

Confronting Evil

Engaging Our Responsibility to Prevent Genocide

James Waller

Part I: Naming and Defining Genocide
Chapter 1: A Crime Without a Name
Chapter 2: By Their Rightful Name
Chapter 3: By Our Words and Actions

Part II: A Continuum of Prevention Strategies
Chapter 4: Upstream Prevention Strategies: Avoiding "A Path to Hell"
Chapter 5: Midstream Prevention Strategies: "Sometimes We Must Interfere"
Chapter 6: Downstream Prevention Strategies: "This Is For Those Who Want Us To Forget"

Part III: Never Again?
Conclusion: Thus Have We Made the World... Thus Have I Made It

Confronting Evil

Engaging Our Responsibility to Prevent Genocide

James Waller

Author Information

Dr. James Waller is the Cohen Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College in New Hampshire and Director of Academic Programs with the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation. Waller's book on perpetrators of genocide, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing (Oxford University Press, 2002; revised and updated 2nd edition, 2007), was praised by Publisher's Weekly for "clearly and effectively synthesizing a wide range of studies to develop an original and persuasive model of the process by which people can become evil." Waller is a member of the advisory board for the International Association of Genocide Scholars and he also serves on the board of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, as an editor-in-chief for Genocide Studies and Prevention, and as a member of the international Genocide Prevention Advisory Network.
Waller is also an Honorary Member of the International Expert Team of the Institute for Research of Genocide Canada and has been named Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at Queen's University in Belfast Northern Ireland.

Confronting Evil

Engaging Our Responsibility to Prevent Genocide

James Waller

Reviews and Awards

"James Waller has written an erudite and sophisticated treatment of the scourge of genocide. Ranging widely across the social sciences, humanities, and the world of policymakers, Waller proposes a sophisticated, nuanced set of responses to genocidal violence, and his insights and recommendations are persuasive. This is a major work by a major scholar, and it deserves to be read widely and taken seriously." --ERNESTO VERDEJA, Associate Professor of Political Science and Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame

"In approachable and elegant prose, Waller brings the story of preventing and responding to genocide into the present. Major texts in genocide studies have done well to address cases, theories, and themes; this book marks a major contribution by integrating a conceptual introduction with a response to the most common question students pose: what can be done? Demonstrating that there have been compelling normative and policy-level advances, Waller challenges his readers to understand what has been done in order to more effectively rise to the challenge of what might still be done." --BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC, Research Director, World Peace Foundation at The Fletcher School, Tufts University

"Drawing on an impressively wide and diverse collection of historical and social scientific research, Waller has produced the most comprehensive study of the prevention of genocide yet written. This book will be required reading for all those who seek to understand and avert these atrocities in the future." --BENJAMIN VALENTINO, Associate Professor of Government, Dartmouth College