Victims and Perpetrators in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity (2019)
May 6–7, 2019
About the Conference
This Workshop explores examples drawn from recent transitional justice initiatives in Canada, notably the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools. From this starting point our aim was to be broadly comparative, drawing from work using a variety of methods, based in a range of political contexts. This transitional justice workshop invited leading scholars in this field to consider how discourses about conflict frame how we understand, story, and then respond to mass atrocity. These responses can either interrupt cycles of violence or, as Hannah Arendt warns, justify totalizing responses to victimhood and perpetration.
All workshop panels will take place in Room 205, 2nd floor, Harvard Faculty Club, 20 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA
Monday, May 6
8:30-9:00 Continental Breakfast
9:00-9:30 Welcome & Introductions
- Ronald Niezen, William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies, Canada Program, Harvard University, and Katharine A. Pearson Chair in Civil Society and Public Policy, Faculties of Law and of Arts, McGill University
- Sarah Federman, Assistant Professor, Negotiations and Conflict Management, College of Public Affairs, University of Baltimore
9:30-12:30 Panel One: Canada's Truth and Reconciliation
Chair: Joseph P. Gone, Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University
9:30-12:00
- Revitalizing Radical Hope for a Just Guatemala the On-Going Legacy of REHMI
Karine Vanthuyne, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Territories of Extraction (GRJTE) University of Ottawa - Language of Reconciliation: Canada's Indigenous Affairs
Carole Blackburn, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia - Responsibility Assignment in the Canadian TRC Report
Matt James (SKYPE), Professor of Political Science, University of Victoria
12:00-12:30 Chair Comments & Discussion
12:30-1:45 Lunch Room 225, Faculty Club
1:45-5:00 Panel Two: Defining Actors via Media & Public Outreach
Chairs: Juan Arredondo, Editorial Photographer and Documentary Filmmaker
Matthias Koenig, Professor of Sociology /Sociology Religion, University of Gottingen
1:45-2:45
- Emotions of Persuasion: The Politics of Truth Commissions in Canada and Tunisia
Ron Niezen, WLMK Chair, Harvard University - Reconciliation Systems Design: An Integrative Framework for Healing Relational Divisions
Brian Thom, Associate Professor, Anthropology, University of Victoria
2:45-3:00 Coffee Break
3:00-4:00
- Complexities of Violence and their Re-attributions: Uganda and the Case Against Dominic Ongwen
Kamari Clarke, Professor of Anthropology, UCLA - What Can Other Countries Learn From the Colombian Victim-centered Reparations Program?
Kathryn Sikkink, Ryan Professor of Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
Phuong Pham, Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Director of Evaluation and Implementation Science at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
Patrick Vinck, Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and lead investigator at the Brigham and Women's Hospital
4:00-4:15 Discussion
4:15-4:45 Chair Comments & Responses
7:00 Dinner - Grafton Street, Cambridge, 1230 Massachusetts Avenue
Tuesday, May 7
8:30-9:00 Continental Breakfast
9:00-12:00 Panel One: Constructing Victims and Perpetrators
Chair: Eileen Babbitt, Professor of Practice, Conflict Analysis and Resolution, Director, Heru-y J. Leir Institute for Human Security, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
9:00-10:00
- Understanding Guilt and Responsibility
Diane Enns, Professor, Department of Philosophy, Ryerson University, Toronto - Confessions of Violence From the Armed Left
Leigh Payne, Latin American Centre, Professor of Sociology, Oxford University
10:00-10:15 Coffee Break
10:15-11:15
- Reconciliation Systems Design: An Integrative Framework for Healing Relational Divisions
Dan Shapiro, Founder and Director of the Harvard International Negotiation Program - Ideal Victims, Ideal Perpetrators, and Heroes: Understanding Narrative Dynamics in Post-Conflict Contexts
Sarah Federman, Assistant Professor, Negotiations and Conflict Management, College of Public Affairs, University of Baltimore
11:15-11:30 Discussion
11:30-12:00 Chair Comments & Responses
12:00-1:00 Lunch Room 225, Faculty Club
1:00-4:30 Panel Two: Case Studies
Chair: Nadim Rouhana, Professor of International Affairs and Conflict Studies, Director of the International Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Program, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
1:30-2:30
- Desire, Exile, and the Trials of the Foreign in Cambodia
Alex Hinton, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, and UNESCO Chair on Genocide Prevention, Rutgers University - "Unoccupying" the Womb: Sexual Violence in Wars and the Bio-Political Modalities of "War Babies" in Bangladesh
Nayanika Mookhetjee, Professor of Anthropology, Durham University (UK)
2:30-2:45 Coffee Break
2:45-3:45
- Governing the Past through National Reconciliation: Containment vs. Integrative Approaches
Charlotte Lloyd, PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, Harvard University
Debbie Sharnak, Lecturer in History and Literature, Harvard University
3:45-4:00 Discussion
4:15-4:45 Chair Comments & Responses