Dr. Helen C. Epstein, Visiting Professor of Human Rights and Public Health at Bard College, will speak about “Another Fine Mess: the US role in Africa’s Wars.” The lecture will be presented under the auspices of the Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and is free and open to the public.

Between April and July 1994, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were murdered in the most rapid genocide ever recorded. In its sheer brutality the Rwanda genocide has been compared to the Holocaust. Dr. Epstein will chronicle how the U.S. preoccupation with terrorism and its naïve dealings with strongmen are at the root of much of the turmoil in eastern and central Africa.

Epstein received her BA degree in 1984 (Physics, University of California-Berkeley), her PhD in 1991 (Molecular Biology, Cambridge University), and her MSc in 1996 (Public Health in Developing Countries, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine).[1] In 1993, she moved to Uganda in search of an AIDS vaccine and taught molecular biology in the medical school at Makerere University in Kampala for a year.