(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)April 19, 2007

Dr. Joyce Apsel

Held on April 19 and attended by over 70 educators from New Jersey and New York, Teaching About Contemporary Genocides Real-Time: Darfur and Beyond was the title of the latest Gumpert Teachers’ Workshop sponsored by the Gross Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies in cooperation with the New Jersey State Commission on Holocaust Education.

Setting the tone for the day’s presentation was Ramapo College’s Provost, Dr. Beth Barnett, who acknowledged the work of classroom teachers in fostering civic education and the international responsibility among the young people of our society. Providing a welcome on behalf of the New Jersey State Commission on Holocaust Education was one of its newer members Dr. Dennis Papazian, professor emeritus of History at the University of Michigan. Emphasizing the importance of genocide education in the face of the increasing presence of deniers of various stripes, especially on the Internet, he focused on the attempt not only to deny Turkish responsibility for the Armenian Genocide, but also to harass and criminalize those who assert otherwise.

Andy Simon and
Steve Pardalis

Delivering the keynote was Dr. Joyce Apsel, a Master Teacher in Humanities at New York University where she teaches Social Foundations and sophomore seminars on genocide, human rights and peace studies. Dr. Apsel holds a M.A. degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester as well as a J.D. from the Rutgers School of Law in Newark. A resident of Ridgewood, New Jersey, Dr. Apsel is the founder and director of Rights Works International, a not-for-profit human rights education project. She lectures and writes on issues of genocide, peace and human rights and is co-editor of Teaching about Genocide (3rd ed. 2003), and editor ofTeaching About Human Rights (2005). Most recently, she compiled and helped write the highly acclaimed teaching guide Darfur: Genocide Before Our Eyes(2005), on which her hands-on talk was largely based.

Next on the agenda was Adelbagy Abushanab, president of the Newark-based Darfur Rehabilitation Project and, like Dennis Papazian, also a member of the New Jersey State Commission on Holocaust Education. A native of the troubled Sudanese region, he depicted how the military dictatorial elite in the Sudanese capital essentially engineered the tragedy in Darfur to extend and reifroce its control over the country’s vast western region. In recounting his experiences growing up in a village and studying accounting in Khartoum, Mr. Abushanab stressed how until the 1990s the local “African” (settled farming) and “Arab” (nomadic herder) peoples lived along side each other in relative harmony. At that time, however, the increasingly Islamist central government began exploiting competition over resources, replacing traditional conflict resolution mechanisms with conflict itself, which it organized and financed.

Dr. Dennis Papazian

Following lunch, there were two more presentations. The first was by Hunterdon Regional High School (Clinton, New Jersey) teacher Ann Helfant, who in her previous position at Ridge High School (Basking Ridge, New Jersey) developed a course covering genocide throughout history, ranging from the Hereros in Africa to Darfur and was also the advisor for the Ridge branch of Help Darfur Now. In addition to finding her enthusiasm infectious, many of the teachers attending the workshop commented on how grateful they were for Helfant’s suggestions about lesson plans and teaching strategies.

Blanche Foster

Concluding the day’s events was a presentation by two Ramapo College student activists, Andy Simon and Steve Pardalis, who founded the campus’s Save Darfur Club. In recounting their club’s activities on campus and in local secondary schools, they modeled and depicted how students were not only able to raise awareness about the unfolding tragedy of Darfur, but also engage in activism and play a significant part in genocide education. It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that the Save Darfur Club received the “Outstanding New Organization of the Year Award” of 2006/2007 from Ramapo College’s Division Student Affairs.

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