Totten Named to International Institute Faculty for Intensive Seminar on Genocide

Samuel Totten, a University of Arkansas professor of curriculum and instruction, will again be a member of the faculty of the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies affiliated with the University of Toronto.

Totten spent last year teaching at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey as the Ida King Distinguished Scholar of Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He taught a special issues course on genocide in Africa in which the class examined the cases of the Nuba Mountains genocide by the government of Sudan, the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the Darfur genocide.

Prior to the start of the Toronto program in mid-August, Totten is traveling to the Nuba Mountains to interview refugees from Darfur and to assess the situation on the ground. Some experts have predicted that the government of Sudan may be on the cusp of carrying out another genocide in the Nuba Mountains.

The two-week program in Toronto takes place with 10 internationally known scholars in the fields of international law, political science, history, sociology and psychology teaching an intensive seminar on the challenging and critical phenomenon of genocide. According to a news release from the institute, the wide variety of specializations ensures that students will learn about genocide and the gross violation of human rights through a unique interdisciplinary and comparative approach.

Totten will teach a session on Darfur, Sudan, and sit on a panel with Maj. Brent Beardsley, who served as the assistant force commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda both prior to and during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Totten's co-editor of "Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal," Herbert Hirsch of Virginia Commonwealth University, is also on the institute faculty.

An author and editor of numerous books about genocide, Totten has also been involved in investigating the continuing genocide in Darfur. In 2004, he interviewed refugees in camps along the Chad/Darfur border as part of a U.S. State Department atrocities investigation team. He has since returned to the Chad/Darfur border to continue interviewing refugees. Totten is currently completing a two-volume set on Darfur for Praeger Publishers.

Totten joined the faculty of the College of Education and Health Professions in 1987.

More information about the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies is available at the institute's website at http://www.genocidestudies.org/.