Editor's Introduction

Editor’s Introduction This is the third issue of Volume 1 of Genocide Studies and Prevention. It is the first non-topical or general issue and, therefore, contains articles covering a wide variety of topics. The lead article by Professor David Scheffer, formerly US ambassador at large for war crimes issues (1997–2001) and currently the Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw/Robert A. Helman Professor of Law and director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University, is an exciting and interesting call for a new genre of human-rights law. Arguing that the term ‘‘genocide’’ has imposed limitations on action to protect human rights, Scheffer calls for a new category of international law, ‘‘atrocity crimes.’’ The purpose here, as he argues, is to ‘‘simplify and yet render more accurate both public dialogue and legal terminology describing genocide and other atrocity crimes.’’ Scheffer’s proposal is so interesting and innovative that we, the co-editors of GSP, have invited ten of the foremost scholars and international lawyers in the field to comment on his proposal. We will publish their reactions as a symposium in the first issue of volume 2 (February 2007), along with Scheffer’s response to the commentaries. The second article in this issue, ‘‘Labeling ‘‘Genocide’’ in Sudan: A Constructionist Analysis of Darfur,’’ by William F.S. Miles, professor of political science at Northeastern University, adopts a theoretical framework of constructionist analysis to demonstrate that the ‘‘severity of political problems,’’ including genocide, ‘‘is a function of the socio-linguistic processing and naming of them.’’ Miles marshals empirical data to trace the use of the term ‘‘genocide’’ ‘‘in the print media with respect to Darfur’’ and finds that ‘‘avoidance of the signifying label ‘genocide’ in the media leads to a downgrading of attention to, and salience for, Darfur among the public at large, their elected representatives, and policy makers.’’ The third article, by Edward Paulino, assistant professor in the Department of History at CUNY/John Jay College of Criminal Justice, examines a potentially genocidal situation that has not attracted the attention of genocide scholars. In ‘‘Anti-Haitianism, Historical Memory, and the Potential for Genocidal Violence in the Dominican Republic,’’ Paulino points out that in 2005, after the murder of a Dominican woman near the Dominican–Haitian border, Haitian communities were deported and their homes were attacked by revenge-seeking Dominicans. He notes that this was part of a historical pattern of anti-Haitianism that goes back to the nineteenth century. In conclusion, Paulino warns that there exists a potential for an ‘‘escalation of mass violence against the largest ethnic and racial minority in the Dominican Republic.’’ The fourth article is a departure from the social-science and historical forms of analysis usually manifested in the study of genocide. In ‘‘The Restless World of Leonardo Alishan (March 1951–January 2005): A Burnt Offering on the Altar of the Armenian Genocide,’’ Rubina Peroomian, a research associate at UCLA, demonstrates the importance of literary analysis as a tool to help understand genocide through a study and description of the work of the poet Leonardo Alishan. Peroomian’s moving portrayal is an important departure from the typical genre of genocide literature, since she expands the discussion from the usual fields of history, political science, sociology, and so on to the area of literature and, in this case, poetry. Poets often convey what social scientists are at a loss to express. Listen as Peroomian describes Alishan: His longing for beauty, his quest for perpetual harmony and order, remained in stark contrast with the chaotic world that engulfed him, the world of genocide, where order and harmony had no meaning. As an artist in pursuit of beauty in art, Alishan faced that impossibility and declared his failure to overcome the challenge. He was not able to resolve, and no one has resolved, the dichotomy between fragmentation forced upon his art as the characteristic of genocide literature and coherence as a condition of beauty in art. Peroomian’s moving account of Alishan’s life and poetry offers us a view into the heart of the artist as he attempts to deal with the atrocity of genocide. Alishan becomes, in the end, according to Peroomian, ‘‘a burnt...