DOCSLIB.ORG

ANXIETY, AGENCY, and AUTHORITY Theresa

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: GENOCIDE RHETORICS IN US POPULAR CULTURE: ANXIETY, AGENCY, AND AUTHORITY Theresa A. Donofrio, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Dissertation directed by: Dr. Shawn J. Parry-Giles Department of Communication Genocide is a notoriously difficult problem to define, represent, resolve, and remember. Popular cultural texts addressing genocide often showcase considerable inconsistency in their attempts to engage each of these four arenas. In part, the textual vacillations contained within such popular cultural treatments of genocide reflect extent tensions in scholarly discussions of atrocity. Both popular and scholarly discourses on genocide demonstrate a substantive ambivalence over the relationships among state authority, public agency, and genocidal violence. Genocide Rhetorics in US Popular Culture departs from existing work on atrocity concerned with the unstable relationships among state power, public power, and violence. Instead, this study centers on the competing ways popular cultural texts constitute state authority and public agency within their attempts to define, represent, resolve, and remember genocide. Because these texts commonly contain contradictory messages about each of these four topics, this study also looks at how these texts manage the palpable anxiety that arises from such textual incongruences. In the process, it spotlights genocidal discourse contained in two museums (the Los Angeles-based Museum of Tolerance and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.) and one documentary (Daniel Goldhagen’s Worse Than War), and is informed by the literature in rhetoric, critical/cultural studies, media studies, memory studies, as well as Holocaust and genocide studies. These texts distinctively manage the anxiety created by inconsistent assessments of state authority and public agency, working to sublimate, exacerbate, or recognize these tensions. Ultimately, the texts converge in validating state power on matters of genocide. Despite paying lip service to popular power, all three of the cases centralize the nation- state or empowered political actors as critical to genocide intervention or prevention. In spite of such shortcomings, this study concludes that the anxiety residing within these texts is productive in so far as it imparts messages about audience accountability and prompts critical reflection on issues of state power, public agency, and genocidal violence. GENOCIDE RHETORICS IN US POPULAR CULTURE: ANXIETY, AGENCY, AND AUTHORITY by Theresa A. Donofrio Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2013 Advisory Committee: Professor Shawn J. Parry-Giles, Chair Professor Linda Aldoory Professor Kristy Maddux Professor Trevor Parry-Giles Professor Linda Steiner ©Copyright by Theresa A. Donofrio 2013 ii For Ross iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Before I began my work on my dissertation project, I often entertained a romantic notion of the solitary writer at her desk, penning drafts in isolation during the early morning hours or editing into the night. Of course, such a mental picture renders invisible the communities of support that make a project like this possible. That support has come from numerous sources over the years. The Eastern Communication Association and the Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California provided financial support for this project. The Eastern Communication Association provided funding in the form of a Ph.D. Centennial Scholarship. The Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences made possible a month’s residence in Los Angeles through a Visiting Ph.D. Candidate Fellowship. The Visiting Ph.D. Candidate Fellowship, which was part of the Dornsife College’s genocide resistance research cluster, facilitated my study of the Museum of Tolerance. Chapter Three could not have been completed without their generosity. On the opposite coast, numerous individuals at the University of Maryland supported this project. My position with the Honors Humanities program afforded me the flexibility to complete my work and was a welcome source of intellectual stimulation. I have learned much about balancing scholarship, teaching, and service from Valérie Orlando and Dana Carluccio, and I was grateful to have exceptional colleagues including Abram Fox, Shanna Smith, and Sarah Hamilton Kimmet. These individuals made the office environment enjoyable, and I appreciated their perspectives on the writing process. iv In the Department of Communication, I am honored to have had the chance to work alongside such gifted scholars and wonderful people as Tim Barney, Lindsey Fox, Elizabeth Gardner, Ben Krueger, Tiffany Lewis, Sean Luechtefeld, Yoav Magid, Jade Olson, and Alyssa Samek. Special thanks go out to Elizabeth, Jade, and Thomas McCloskey for their willingness to read long parts of this dissertation and provide feedback. Countless others have listened to me talk through parts of this project and for their time, energy, and advice I am grateful. Of course, I owe many thanks to the faculty in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland and to my dissertation committee. Linda Aldoory, Kristy Maddux, Trevor Parry-Giles, and Linda Steiner generously gave their time to reading and reviewing my work. These scholars have sharpened my critical sensibilities and have been invaluable mentors. Additionally, I consider it a gift to have had the opportunity to study under brilliant scholars such as Mari Boor Tonn, James Klumpp, and Robert Gaines. The many lessons I have learned from these individuals fed my curiosity and provided a strong foundation for the next stages of my academic career. Special thanks are reserved for my advisor, Shawn J. Parry-Giles. I am a better writer, scholar, and researcher because of her tutelage. She has given countless hours to reading multiple drafts of this project, talking through obstacles in argument development, and providing encouragement during times of doubt. Her faith in her advisees’ potential and commitment to their intellectual development inspires me to become a better educator. The best way I can conceive of saying “thank you” is to pay it all forward as I continue my teaching and research. v Finally, much love and many thanks go out to my family. My parents, Sharon and Joseph Donofrio, and sister, Pam Donofrio, tolerated an absent daughter/sibling as I spent more time than I would care to admit during trips home off writing at a coffeehouse. Nevertheless, they were constant sources of love and support. My new parents, Susan and Stanley Katz, encouraged me during stressful parts of the process and, along with Lauren and John Madera, sent many kind words my way. To all of them, thank you. Without a doubt, Ross Katz has nearly achieved sainthood for his selflessness throughout our relationship. I am most grateful for the love and nourishment he provides my body, mind, and soul. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1 1. Tensions Surrounding Definition, Representation, Resolution, and Remembrance in Holocaust and Genocide Studies ......................................................................................82 2. Proximity, Distance, and Authority in Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Worse Than War 177 3. The Glorification of State Authority and the Problematic Politics of Security within the Museum of Tolerance ......................................................................................................274 4. Rhetorical Intimation and the Specter of the Exnominated within the USHMM’s Genocide Cessation Discourse ........................................................................................375 Afterword .........................................................................................................................482 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................495 1 INTRODUCTION: The Rhetoricity of Genocide Popular culture and academic texts on genocide often begin with a story of rhetorical invention. This story foregrounds Raphael Lemkin, the Polish jurist credited with coining the word, “genocide.”1 As Power recounts the story, Lemkin, a student of languages, had long been interested in the history of mass slaughter. Upon hearing of the Armenian genocide and questioning the legality of that atrocity, Lemkin learned there was no international law condemning genocide. He was skeptical of a logic that criminalized piracy as an international crime but left no legal scaffolding for the international community to justify intervention when a nation was eliminating its own people. Dissatisfied with this lacuna amid the rise of Nazi power in the 1930s and 1940s, Lemkin combined the Greek word for race (genos) with the Latin word for killing (cide) to create the term “genocide.” After World War II, he exerted considerable effort into ensuring the term was used during the Nuremberg Trials. Disappointed with the results, Lemkin then turned his attention to the United Nations, beginning an intensive lobbying campaign to criminalize genocide through international law.2 The end product of this labor was the creation of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,
Recommended publications
  • Teaching Social Issues with Film

    Teaching Social Issues with Film

    Teaching Social Issues with Film Teaching Social Issues with Film William Benedict Russell III University of Central Florida INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC. Charlotte, NC • www.infoagepub.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Russell, William B. Teaching social issues with film / William Benedict Russell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-60752-116-7 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-60752-117-4 (hardcover) 1. Social sciences--Study and teaching (Secondary)--Audio-visual aids. 2. Social sciences--Study and teaching (Secondary)--Research. 3. Motion pictures in education. I. Title. H62.2.R86 2009 361.0071’2--dc22 2009024393 Copyright © 2009 Information Age Publishing Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America Contents Preface and Overview .......................................................................xiii Acknowledgments ............................................................................. xvii 1 Teaching with Film ................................................................................ 1 The Russell Model for Using Film ..................................................... 2 2 Legal Issues ............................................................................................ 7 3 Teaching Social Issues with Film
  • The Armenian Genocide

    The Armenian Genocide

    The Armenian Genocide During World War I, the Ottoman Empire carried out what most international experts and historians have concluded was one of the largest genocides in the world's history, slaughtering huge portions of its minority Armenian population. In all, over 1 million Armenians were put to death. To this day, Turkey denies the genocidal intent of these mass murders. My sense is that Armenians are suffering from what I would call incomplete mourning, and they can't complete that mourning process until their tragedy, their wounds are recognized by the descendants of the people who perpetrated it. People want to know what really happened. We are fed up with all these stories-- denial stories, and propaganda, and so on. Really the new generation want to know what happened 1915. How is it possible for a massacre of such epic proportions to take place? Why did it happen? And why has it remained one of the greatest untold stories of the 20th century? This film is made possible by contributions from John and Judy Bedrosian, the Avenessians Family Foundation, the Lincy Foundation, the Manoogian Simone Foundation, and the following. And others. A complete list is available from PBS. The Armenians. There are between six and seven million alive today, and less than half live in the Republic of Armenia, a small country south of Georgia and north of Iran. The rest live around the world in countries such as the US, Russia, France, Lebanon, and Syria. They're an ancient people who originally came from Anatolia some 2,500 years ago.
  • Atom Egoyan's Ararat

    Atom Egoyan's Ararat

    Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal Volume 3 Issue 2 Article 7 August 2008 Cycles of Genocide, Stories of Denial: Atom Egoyan's Ararat Donna-Lee Frieze Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp Recommended Citation Frieze, Donna-Lee (2008) "Cycles of Genocide, Stories of Denial: Atom Egoyan's Ararat," Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal: Vol. 3: Iss. 2: Article 7. Available at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol3/iss2/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Open Access Journals at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Cycles of Genocide, Stories of Denial: Atom Egoyan’s Ararat Donna-Lee Frieze School of History, Heritage and Society, Deakin University, Australia This article focuses on Atom Egoyan’s Ararat and explores how, through a convoluted narrative structure, Egoyan grapples with denial of the Armenian Genocide and the consequences of those denials for present generations—both Turkish and Armenian—illuminated in the film as an extension of the genocide. Egoyan uses a film-within-a-film to move beyond a popular definition of genocide as mass killing alone and links the understanding of stories, truths, and perspectives in everyday life to the dehumanizing acts of genocide. Employing the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical theory of the Other (the ethical) and philosophical understandings of ontology (dehumanization) to illuminate the genocide and its ongoing denial, this article contends that Egoyan’s focus on the generations of genocide survivors points to the ethical responsibility to one another that underlies everyday lives and sits at the heart of what is absent in the acts of genocide.
  • Intent to Destroy, Directed and Produced by Joe Berlinger. 2017, 114 Minutes

    Intent to Destroy, Directed and Produced by Joe Berlinger. 2017, 114 Minutes

    Nationalities Papers (2019), 47: 1, 162–164 doi:10.1017/nps.2018.46 FILM REVIEW Intent to Destroy, directed and produced by Joe Berlinger. 2017, 114 minutes. English. Contact: Cailin McFadden, Cargo Releasing (New York), [email protected]. Webpage: https://www.asnconvention.com/intent-to-destroy. Shown at the ASN 2018 World Convention. Watching Intent to Destroy was for me not simply an evening at the movies. The film by the prolific documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger seeks to understand the elusive and contested history of the Armenian Genocide and the efforts by the Turkish government and pseudo- scholars to deny the reality of the catastrophic events of 1915–1916. Not only does it provide a succinct and persuasive account of the mass deportations and massacres of Ottoman Armenians a century ago, in which some 800,000 to more than a million people died, but it also addresses the fraught issues of what we can learn about a traumatic past and how we can combat those who propose “alternative facts.” For a historian of the Genocide like myself, passive reception of the film is impossible. Instead, an active engagement with the talking heads (most of whom I know personally) and the archival footage (with which I was largely familiar) both riveted my attention and raised questions about the problems of representing the unthinkable. Berlinger’s ingenious device was to make his film about the making of another film, the rather melodramatic The Promise (2016) directed by Terry George, already famous for the Academy Award winning Hotel Rwanda (2004). Most reviewers panned The Promise, which lost most of its $90 million investment by the late Armenian billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, and conceded that Intent to Destroy was superior to its fictional predecessor.
  • March 2012 · Volume 5, Issue 3

    March 2012 · Volume 5, Issue 3

    Park News National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior The official newspaper of National Mall and Memorial Parks March 2012 · Volume 5, Issue 3 Activities 2 Cherry Blossom Festival 4 Plan Your Visit 8 Cherry Blossom Centennial Cherry Tree Rebellion Ranger Brad Berger Ranger JoAnn Garcia arch 27, 2012 marks the 100th anniversary isitors strolling to the Thomas Jefferson Me- Mof the ceremonial planting of Japanese Vmorial along the Tidal Basin when the cherry flowering cherry trees along the Tidal Basin by trees are in full bloom enjoy a spectacular view. First Lady Helen Taft and the Viscountess Chinda, Yet the story behind the scenery and the memorial wife of the Japanese Ambassador. From her first is filled with turmoil and controversy. Loud pro- visit to Japan in 1885, noted authority on Asian tests against the building of the memorial and the culture and newspaper correspondent Eliza R. removal of the cherished trees resulted in a great Scidmore advocated the planting of such trees battle by several Washingtonians. in the nation’s capital. The years turned into In 1912, First Lady Helen Taft and the Vis- decades in her quest to beautify the city. Despite countess Chinda, wife of the Japanese Ambassa- her lack of success, this was a formative time for dor, planted the first two Yoshino cherry trees on Washington, D.C., as a series of damaging floods the north end of the Tidal Basin. Originally there underscored the need for dredging the Potomac city we know today. The city, taking its cue from were 3,020 cherry trees of 12 different varieties.
  • The Cost of Memorializing: Analyzing Armenian Genocide Memorials and Commemorations in the Republic of Armenia and in the Diaspora

    The Cost of Memorializing: Analyzing Armenian Genocide Memorials and Commemorations in the Republic of Armenia and in the Diaspora

    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR HISTORY, CULTURE AND MODERNITY www.history-culture-modernity.org Published by: Uopen Journals Copyright: © The Author(s). Content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence eISSN: 2213-0624 The Cost of Memorializing: Analyzing Armenian Genocide Memorials and Commemorations in the Republic of Armenia and in the Diaspora Sabrina Papazian HCM 7: 55–86 DOI: 10.18352/hcm.534 Abstract In April of 1965 thousands of Armenians gathered in Yerevan and Los Angeles, demanding global recognition of and remembrance for the Armenian Genocide after fifty years of silence. Since then, over 200 memorials have been built around the world commemorating the vic- tims of the Genocide and have been the centre of hundreds of marches, vigils and commemorative events. This article analyzes the visual forms and semiotic natures of three Armenian Genocide memorials in Armenia, France and the United States and the commemoration prac- tices that surround them to compare and contrast how the Genocide is being memorialized in different Armenian communities. In doing so, this article questions the long-term effects commemorations have on an overall transnational Armenian community. Ultimately, it appears that calls for Armenian Genocide recognition unwittingly categorize the global Armenian community as eternal victims, impeding the develop- ment of both the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian diaspora. Keywords: Armenian Genocide, commemoration, cultural heritage, diaspora, identity, memorials HCM 2019, VOL. 7 Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/202155 12:33:22PM via free access PAPAZIAN Introduction On 24 April 2015, the hundredth anniversary of the commencement of the Armenian Genocide, Armenians around the world collectively mourned for and remembered their ancestors who had lost their lives in the massacres and deportations of 1915.1 These commemorations took place in many forms, including marches, candlelight vigils, ceremo- nial speeches and cultural performances.
  • Human Rights: History and Theory Spring 2015, Tuesday-Thursday, 2:30-3:50 P.M., KIJP 215 Dr

    Human Rights: History and Theory Spring 2015, Tuesday-Thursday, 2:30-3:50 P.M., KIJP 215 Dr

    PJS 494, Human Rights: History and Theory Spring 2015, Tuesday-Thursday, 2:30-3:50 p.m., KIJP 215 Dr. Everard Meade, Director, Trans-Border Institute Office Hours: Tuesdays, 4-5:30 p.m., or by appointment, KIJP 126 ixty years after the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there’s widespread agreement over what human rights should be. And yet, what human rights are – where they come from, how best to achieve their promise, S and what they mean to people living through war, atrocity, and poverty – remains more contentious than ever. This course explores where human rights come from and what they mean by integrating them into a history of attempts to alleviate and prevent human suffering and exploitation, from the Conquest of the Americas and the origins of the Enlightenment, through the First World War and the rise of totalitarianism, a period before the widespread use of the term “human rights,” and one that encompasses the early heyday of humanitarianism. Many attempts to alleviate human suffering and exploitation do not articulate a set of rights-based claims, nor are they framed in ways that empower individual victims and survivors, or which set principled precedents to be applied in future cases. Indeed, lumping human rights together with various humanitarian interventions risks watering down the struggle for justice in the face of power at the core of human rights praxis, rendering the concept an empty signifier, a catch-all for “doing good” in the world. On the other hand, the social movements and activists who invest human rights with meaning are often ideologically eclectic, and pursue a mix of principled and strategic actions.
  • The Obama Administration and the Struggles to Prevent Atrocities in the Central African Republic

    The Obama Administration and the Struggles to Prevent Atrocities in the Central African Republic

    POLICY PAPER November 2016 THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AUTHOR: AND THE STRUGGLE TO Charles J. Brown Leonard and Sophie Davis PREVENT ATROCITIES IN THE Genocide Prevention Fellow, January – June 2015. Brown is CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC currently Managing Director of Strategy for Humanity, LLC. DECEMBER 2012 – SEPTEMBER 2014 1 METHODOLOGY AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This report is the product of research conducted while I was the Leonard and Sophie Davis Genocide Prevention Fellow at the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). It is based on a review of more than 3,500 publicly available documents, including material produced by the US and French governments, the United Nations, the African Union, and the Economic Community of Central African States; press stories; NGO reports; and the Twitter and Facebook accounts of key individuals. I also interviewed a number of current and former US government officials and NGO representatives involved in the US response to the crisis. Almost all interviewees spoke on background in order to encourage a frank discussion of the relevant issues. Their views do not necessarily represent those of the agencies or NGOs for whom they work or worked – or of the United States Government. Although I attempted to meet with as many of the key players as possible, several officials turned down or did not respond to interview requests. I would like to thank USHMM staff, including Cameron Hudson, Naomi Kikoler, Elizabeth White, Lawrence Woocher, and Daniel Solomon, for their encouragement, advice, and comments. Special thanks to Becky Spencer and Mary Mennel, who were kind enough to make a lakeside cabin available for a writing retreat.
  • C Ass CITY CHRONICLE J

    C Ass CITY CHRONICLE J

    I C AsS CITY CHRONICLEJ VOL. 22, NO. 4. CASS CITY, MICHIGAN, FRIDAY, JUNE 4, 1926. 8 PAGES. fright time. There were plenty of hard hit balls, but they were aimed j Parting SuchSwee Sorrow in the morning with Sunday school at ROB-SRABBONABANK, fat somebody each time. Flint hasn't I0:30 and church service at 11:30. flAY DAY SCHEDULED I • • ' ,,,nrr ,,rFPTFB , i lost. a 'game thzs year, among their| MOP,F_..wRiTinG, Foenc , FNuR TIJi" C N! A I TV Lansing', Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, ~Ju ing service. The pastor w111 preach on U Previous to their appearance in Cass "The New Testament Standard of City, Bad Axe was defeated by them Brother~iood." Demonstrations Show Phases :Two Were Held by Officers 6 to 1 and Bad Axe holds victories Will Be Held at 11 Towns in Epworth League will meet at 6:30. Within an Hour after the over Port Huron and Bay City. Tuscola in the Coming This will be "Institute Night" in of Cutting Alfalfa Step charge of our last year delegates. The score: by Step. Theft Was Made° RHE M°nth- Evening service at 7:30. Sermon *Flint 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1--4 8 3 "Investment of Life." The Shabbona Bank was robbed Flint 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1--4 8 3 Clinics for pre-school age children You are cordially invited to these The '~fIay Day" which was sched- ~shortly after two o'clock Wednesday C.C. 0 0 0 0 1 0 10 10--3 10 3 will be held at several towns of Tus- Services of the church.
  • Sabiha Gökçen's 80-Year-Old Secret‖: Kemalist Nation

    Sabiha Gökçen's 80-Year-Old Secret‖: Kemalist Nation

    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO ―Sabiha Gökçen‘s 80-Year-Old Secret‖: Kemalist Nation Formation and the Ottoman Armenians A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Communication by Fatma Ulgen Committee in charge: Professor Robert Horwitz, Chair Professor Ivan Evans Professor Gary Fields Professor Daniel Hallin Professor Hasan Kayalı Copyright Fatma Ulgen, 2010 All rights reserved. The dissertation of Fatma Ulgen is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Chair University of California, San Diego 2010 iii DEDICATION For my mother and father, without whom there would be no life, no love, no light, and for Hrant Dink (15 September 1954 - 19 January 2007 iv EPIGRAPH ―In the summertime, we would go on the roof…Sit there and look at the stars…You could reach the stars there…Over here, you can‘t.‖ Haydanus Peterson, a survivor of the Armenian Genocide, reminiscing about the old country [Moush, Turkey] in Fresno, California 72 years later. Courtesy of the Zoryan Institute Oral History Archive v TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page……………………………………………………………....
  • David Rieff, Was Borned in 1952, in Boston, Massachusetts) Is an a Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis ( Simon & American Polemicist and Pundit

    David Rieff, Was Borned in 1952, in Boston, Massachusetts) Is an a Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis ( Simon & American Polemicist and Pundit

    Nutrition, global food crisis wednesday oct 9th| 6.30 pm| IPK The author Zoom David Rieff, was borned in 1952, in Boston, Massachusetts) is an A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis ( Simon & American polemicist and pundit. His books have focused on issues Schuste, 2003) of immigration, international conflict, and humanitarianism. Timely and controversial, A Bed for the Night He has published numerous articles in The New York Times, reveals how humanitarian organizations The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street are often betrayed and misused, and have Journal, Le Monde, El País, The New Republic, World Affairs, increasingly lost sight of their purpose. Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs, The Nation, and Drawing on firsthand reporting from war zones other publications. around the world, David Rieff shows us what aid workers do in the field and the growing gap between their noble ambitions and their actual capabilities for alleviating suffering. He describes how many humanitarian organizations have moved from their founding principle of neutrality, which gave them access to victims, to encouraging the international community to take action to stop civil wars and ethnic cleansing. By calling for intervention, humanitarian organizations risk being seen as taking sides in a conflict and thus jeopardizing their access to victims. And by overreaching, the humanitarian movement has allowed itself to be hijacked Bibliography by the major powers. Rieff concludes that if humanitarian organizations are to do
  • Peace Trail on the National Mall

    Peace Trail on the National Mall

    PEACE TRAIL ON THE NATIONAL MALL Making Peace Possible Learn more about the United States Institute of Peace at www.usip.org PEACE TRAIL ON THE NATIONAL MALL Introduction The northwest corner of the National Mall could be considered the “War and Peace Corner” of our nation’s capital. It is home to this country’s most famous veterans memorials, which draw tens of millions of visitors each year. It is also home to the headquarters of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), and to other symbols and sites with peace themes, which, while generally less prominent, offer an important and complementary narrative. The following Peace Trail on the National Mall is the result of a collaboration between USIP and colleagues at the Guild of Professional Tour Guides of Washington, D.C. and at the National Park Service. Anchored at USIP and tracing a path to a dozen other key sites in the vicinity, it brings a “peace lens” to the experience of visiting the National Mall. It may be used as a self-guided walking tour or a reference guide, elevating stories of key figures, institutions, and moments in history that demonstrate America’s enduring commitment to peace. 1 M HA EDWARD R MURROW H ST NW 66 Decatur House Von Steuben PARK LAFAYETTE Kosciuszko NEW US Court of George New Executive PARK Appeals and Washington H ST NW Office Bldg Baruch Bench Jackson US Court University of Claims Renwick Gallery 24TH ST NW Rochambeau Treasury Annex Lafayette Juarez Blair-Lee House Closed roads G ST NW Eisenhower 14TH ST NW Executive Department Office of the F ST NW