EVENTS AND LINKAGES STRASSLER CENTER FOR SUMMIT: “INFORMED ACTIVISM: ARMED CONFLICT,HOLOCAUST SCARCE RESOURCES, AND CONGO,” 23-25 SEPTEMBER 2011 & GENOCIDE STUDIES “We have no guns but we have our microphones!” With reach ATout toCLARK USAID with UNIVERSITY thoughts on how to intervene, act, these words Chouchou Namegabe highlighted her mis- and implement change in Congo. sion as a Congolese journalist and human rights advocate: Congolese activist Fidel Bafilemba from the Enough Proj- to bring the plight of women in the Democratic Republic ect called2011 for -a 2012“zero tolerance” corruption policy, mirror- of the Congo to the forefront of national and international ing successfulYEAR efforts END in REPORTRwanda, to eradicate the culture of consciousness. The founder of South Kivu’s Women’s Me- “help yourself” in Congo that perpetuates violence. Adam dia Association, Namegabe’s keynote speech addressed Keith, Desk Officer for the Africa Great Lakes at the US sexual violence in the Congo and served as a call to action State Department, pointed to the mineral trade in Congo for the one thousand people in attendance. Her talk opened as the main drive for conflict but also the entry point for the international summit Informed Activism: Armed Con- action, citing five components of US government policy flict, Scarce Resources, and Congo hosted by the Strassler aimed at addressing the violence. And Naama Haviv, As- Center, in partnership with Jewish World Watch, and sup- sistant Director of Jewish World Watch, urged action in lieu ported by philanthropist Albert Tapper. Students, activists, of semantics, emphasizing the gap between US government academics, community members, and representatives from policy and actions on the ground. government and nongovernmental organizations gathered The last speaker of the morning, Saleem Ali, offered a at Clark for an unprecedented opportunity for coalition scholarly explanation of the multi-causal association be- building between individuals and organizations that seek to tween minerals and the violent competition for control of end the conflict in the DRC. them in the DRC. Ali, Professor of Environmental Studies at Introducing Namegabe, Clark University President David the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environ- Angel announced that the University has approved a pur- ment and Natural Resources, encouraged less reliance on chasing policy that favors companies which have adopted a regression models used to build associations between vari- process certifying that their electronic devices use conflict- ables, as they fail to address multi-causality. Looking at the free minerals. Clark is at the forefront among universities in range of Summit participants, Ali reflected, “we are all activ- approving such a policy thanks, in part, to Naama Haviv ’00, ists.” And rightly so, as “neutrality favors the oppressor.” MA (ABD) ’06. Speaking at the Strassler Center in fall 2010, Sara E. Brown Haviv inspired Clark undergraduates from STAND (the student division of the Genocide Intervention Network) to lobby the University to avoid the purchase of products that contribute to the violence in Congo. Addressing, as Professor Cynthia Enloe phrased it, “the convergence of the politics of minerals and the politics of sexual violence, together, and at the same time,” a diverse group of activists, bureaucrats, and academics took to the lectern. Many spoke in broad terms about the horrific violence. George Weiss, founder and CEO of Radio La Be- nevolencija Humanitarian Tools Foundation, by contrast, suggested a seemingly simple step for implementing fea- sible and peaceful change on the ground. To de-escalate the violence, he recommended that the Congolese govern- ment pay the salaries of their civil servants. “Pay the civil servants,” he advised, “and peace will become a more viable reality.” Chloe Schwenke, a Senior Advisor at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), asked the audience for solutions, encouraging them to {1} EVENTS AND LINKAGES SUMMIT: “INFORMED ACTIVISM: ARMED CONFLICT, SCARCE RESOURCES, AND CONGO,” 23-25 September 2011 “We have no guns but we have our microphones!” With reach out to USAID with thoughts on how to intervene, act, these words Chouchou Namegabe highlighted her mis- and implement change in Congo. sion as a Congolese journalist and human rights advocate: Congolese activist Fidel Bafilemba from the Enough Proj- to bring the plight of women in the Democratic Republic ect called for a “zero tolerance” corruption policy, mirror- of the Congo to the forefront of national and international ing successful efforts in Rwanda, to eradicate the culture of consciousness. The founder of South Kivu’s Women’s Me- “help yourself” in Congo that perpetuates violence. Adam dia Association, Namegabe’s keynote speech addressed Keith, Desk Officer for the Africa Great Lakes at the US sexual violence in the Congo and served as a call to action State Department, pointed to the mineral trade in Congo for the one thousand people in attendance. Her talk opened as the main drive for conflict but also the entry point for the international summit Informed Activism: Armed Con- action, citing five components of US government policy flict, Scarce Resources, and Congo hosted by the Strassler aimed at addressing the violence. And Naama Haviv, As- Center, in partnership with Jewish World Watch, and sup- sistant Director of Jewish World Watch, urged action in lieu ported by philanthropist Albert Tapper. Students, activists, of semantics, emphasizing the gap between US government academics, community members, and representatives from policy and actions on the ground. government and nongovernmental organizations gathered The last speaker of the morning, Saleem Ali, offered a at Clark for an unprecedented opportunity for coalition scholarly explanation of the multi-causal association be- building between individuals and organizations that seek to tween minerals and the violent competition for control of end the conflict in the DRC. them in the DRC. Ali, Professor of Environmental Studies at Introducing Namegabe, Clark University President David the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environ- Angel announced that the University has approved a pur- ment and Natural Resources, encouraged less reliance on chasing policy that favors companies which have adopted a regression models used to build associations between vari- process certifying that their electronic devices use conflict- ables, as they fail to address multi-causality. Looking at the free minerals. Clark is at the forefront among universities in range of Summit participants, Ali reflected, “we are all activ- approving such a policy thanks, in part, to Naama Haviv ’00, ists.” And rightly so, as “neutrality favors the oppressor.” MA (ABD) ’06. Speaking at the Strassler Center in fall 2010, Sara E. Brown Haviv inspired Clark undergraduates from STAND (the student division of the Genocide Intervention Network) to lobby the University to avoid the purchase of products that contribute to the violence in Congo. Addressing, as Professor Cynthia Enloe phrased it, “the convergence of the politics of minerals and the politics of sexual violence, together, and at the same time,” a diverse group of activists, bureaucrats, and academics took to the lectern. Many spoke in broad terms about the horrific violence. George Weiss, founder and CEO of Radio La Be- nevolencija Humanitarian Tools Foundation, by contrast, suggested a seemingly simple step for implementing fea- sible and peaceful change on the ground. To de-escalate the violence, he recommended that the Congolese govern- ment pay the salaries of their civil servants. “Pay the civil “Whoever fails to increase knowledge, servants,” he advised, “and peace will become a more viable reality.” Chloedecreases Schwenke, knowledge.” a Senior Advisor at the United States Agency for International— THEDevelopment WISDOM OF (USAID),THE SAGES asked the audience for solutions, encouraging them to {2} Strassler Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies EVENTS AND LINKAGES Dear Friends: the mission of the Strassler Center. The education we offer seeks to lay bare the underlying social processes and political, bureaucratic, and economic structures of “Education is a kind of continuing dialogue,” Robert genocide and mass murder. By drilling down on events Hutchins, educational philosopher, president of the at specific times and places, the foundational skeleton University of Chicago from 1929 to 1945 and, later, head of genocide (enactment, responses, resistance) emerg- of the Ford Foundation, remarked. He went on to ex- es. And this knowledge, we trust, will help us identify plain, “and a dialogue assumes, in the nature of the case, different points of view.” Hutchins’s vision of wide-ranging perspectives and rich interdisciplinarity captures the education we offer at the Center and char- acterizes the symposia and conferences we host. Indeed, our identity as a site of Holocaust and geno- cide studies gives concrete expression to that idea. Our groundbreaking conference, Beyond the Armenian Genocide: The Question of Restitution and Repara- tion in Comparative Review, held in November 2011, shone bright as a case in point. Focusing on the Arme- nian Genocide, the Holocaust, and the Native Ameri- can Genocide, eminent scholars examined questions of post-conflict justice: the return of stolen art and arti- facts; the restitution of personal and communal proper- ty; and how postwar agreements and treaties