Sad.
This morning, literally this morning, as Trouble was kicking me awake at 5:00 AM, I started to think over and over and over about the dissertation that I'm actually thinking about writing now. I've been thinking about it for a couple of months, about how I would write on the burgeoning anti-genocide movement, it's genesis and transitions, its successes and challenges, the question of why Rwanda activists (the few there were) didn't become Bosnia activists (the few there were), why those movements stayed single-issue movements and didn't translate to the wider "never again, for real this time" movements we see today, why Darfur was such a catalyst for that.
And in my head I was starting the outlining of it (as I've done a bunch of times, it's been written and rewritten like six times in my head, if and when I put it on paper that means it'll actually happen). And I was thinking that the person I'd definitely need to talk to about the Rwanda activism (and, specifically, why it didn't really exist - other than Rwanda being over in 100 days) is Alison Des Forges.
There's no way to give an adequate explanation of how important of a person Alison is (shit) was. She was a senior advisor at Human Rights Watch on the Great Lakes region. She has written perhaps the most definitive reports on Rwanda, Burundi and the region in general. During the genocide in Rwanda, she was single-handedly beating down doors at the State Department trying to get someone to do something, anything to stop the slaughter. She managed to save several people, including some pretty important human rights activists.
When I met her in Stockholm a few years ago, I'd just written a risk assessment, analyzing the potential for renewed genocide in Rwanda and Burundi. All it took was one word to her that I had been researching Rwanda, and she took over an hour out of her busy (super busy) schedule as an expert and presenter at this giant international political conference to sit with me and discuss my research, offer me guidance and further resources, offer me her experience and perspective if I continued research on the region. She was a true activist, dedicated not only to her cause and region, but to the scholars and activists that hoped to follow in her (very large) footsteps. It is in part because of her generosity and infectious passion that I decided to continue working in this field, no matter how hard.
She died in today's devestating plane crash in NY.
I'm kind of in pieces.
I know I didn't know her so well, but everyone that met her even just once felt like they'd known her forever, that she was a role model and a mentor.
I'm taking this the way, I think, lots of people took the death of Princess Di. In the genocide studies world, that is about the scale and the impact of this loss - an iconic figure, a central force.
Only I think my devastation is kind of more justified, but I imagine all mourners feel that way.
And in my head I was starting the outlining of it (as I've done a bunch of times, it's been written and rewritten like six times in my head, if and when I put it on paper that means it'll actually happen). And I was thinking that the person I'd definitely need to talk to about the Rwanda activism (and, specifically, why it didn't really exist - other than Rwanda being over in 100 days) is Alison Des Forges.
There's no way to give an adequate explanation of how important of a person Alison is (shit) was. She was a senior advisor at Human Rights Watch on the Great Lakes region. She has written perhaps the most definitive reports on Rwanda, Burundi and the region in general. During the genocide in Rwanda, she was single-handedly beating down doors at the State Department trying to get someone to do something, anything to stop the slaughter. She managed to save several people, including some pretty important human rights activists.
When I met her in Stockholm a few years ago, I'd just written a risk assessment, analyzing the potential for renewed genocide in Rwanda and Burundi. All it took was one word to her that I had been researching Rwanda, and she took over an hour out of her busy (super busy) schedule as an expert and presenter at this giant international political conference to sit with me and discuss my research, offer me guidance and further resources, offer me her experience and perspective if I continued research on the region. She was a true activist, dedicated not only to her cause and region, but to the scholars and activists that hoped to follow in her (very large) footsteps. It is in part because of her generosity and infectious passion that I decided to continue working in this field, no matter how hard.
She died in today's devestating plane crash in NY.
I'm kind of in pieces.
I know I didn't know her so well, but everyone that met her even just once felt like they'd known her forever, that she was a role model and a mentor.
I'm taking this the way, I think, lots of people took the death of Princess Di. In the genocide studies world, that is about the scale and the impact of this loss - an iconic figure, a central force.
Only I think my devastation is kind of more justified, but I imagine all mourners feel that way.