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University of New Hampshire
May 2 2014
Becoming Evil: Speaker addresses nature of genocide
By Cole Caviston, Staff Writer
Students crowded Memorial Union Building Theater I Wednesday night to
listen intently to a lecture delivered by Dr. James Waller on the
nature of genocide and the reasoning that ordinary people have for
carrying it out, also known as "Becoming Evil."
The event soon became packed and more students began arriving after
the event began at 8 p.m., causing late-coming students to sit down in
the aisle or listen from the doorway.
Dr. Waller was introduced by his daughter Hannah Waller, the president
of Amnesty International UNH. She described him as a "huge inspiration
of why I want to do the work I want to."
The talk was filled with anecdotes from his experiences researching
genocide, from exhuming mass graves in Bosnia to interviewing the
perpetrators of Rwandan Genocide. Dr. Waller presented his lecture
through PowerPoint that touched upon the three main points of his
research.
His first point addressed what the historical scope of genocide and
what it looks like today.
Waller described the 20th century as "the age of genocide," in which
the greatest mass killings and ethnic slaughters were carried out,
from the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide and
the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
"The conservative estimate is 60 million killed in genocide in the
20th century," Waller said. "People who thought they were protected by
their state, but their state turned on them and tried to kill them."
Waller next addressed whom it was that carried out the acts of
atrocity. He was careful to distinguish between architects responsible
for the policy or the bureaucrats who implemented it, but rather the
rank and file who killed the victims in person.
"There is never a case where a regime cannot find people to carry out
killings," Waller said.
There is no definitive answer to know how many killers it takes to
carry out genocide, but most of the guilty parties, which often number
in the thousands, are never brought to justice.
Waller addressed what he believes to be the myths surrounding
genocide. He disputed the idea that ideology is the basis for evil
behavior, as he believes that not everyone is imprinted in the exact
same way and may well be motivated by other emotions, such as greed.
He also mentioned the idea that the way we think influences how we
behave is misleading, when actually modern research suggests that how
we act affects how we think.
"The reason for slavery in America was for economic purposes, but
afterwards racial ideas of superiority were adopted to justify the
existence of slavery," Waller said.
The idea that perpetrators are purely pathological (the "Bad Nazi
Thesis") was proved to be inaccurate at the Nuremburg trials where the
defendants were given personality and intelligence tests, with results
that placed all but one of the defendants as having above average
intelligence.
Waller quoted W.H. Auden, saying that "evil is unspectacular and it is
always human" to describe how he came to realize that the origins for
most of the perpetrators that he interviewed were remarkably ordinary.
"I was struck more by the ordinariness of who they are, of their life
outside of the evil that they have committed," Waller said.
Towards the end of the lecture Waller discussed why he believes the
study of genocide matters. He stressed the importance of understanding
and humanizing the perpetrators, who had not done the same for their
victims.
"This is not to emphasize, sympathize or apologize for the evil
they've committed, but to understand why they commit these types of
atrocities," Waller said. "If we can understand how ordinary people
become capable of this extraordinary evil, we can start to understand
the ways to shift that behavior in a different direction."
Dr. Waller is a social psychologist and professor at the Cohen Center
of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College, a department
that is one of the oldest for Holocaust research studies in the
country. He is the author of the book Becoming Evil: How Ordinary
People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, which is scheduled for a
third edition release this year.
"I study the worst thing in the world, maybe, but what I'm hopeful and
optimistic about is that what I study is a problem created by humans,"
Waller said. "If it's a problem created by humans, it's a problem that
can be solved by humans and I absolutely think it's a problem we can
overcome."
Amnesty International UNH and UNH STAND sponsored the lecture.
http://www.tnhonline.com/news/becoming-evil-speaker-addresses-nature-of-genocide-1.3166371#.U2Pxf8aKDIU
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
May 2 2014
Becoming Evil: Speaker addresses nature of genocide
By Cole Caviston, Staff Writer
Students crowded Memorial Union Building Theater I Wednesday night to
listen intently to a lecture delivered by Dr. James Waller on the
nature of genocide and the reasoning that ordinary people have for
carrying it out, also known as "Becoming Evil."
The event soon became packed and more students began arriving after
the event began at 8 p.m., causing late-coming students to sit down in
the aisle or listen from the doorway.
Dr. Waller was introduced by his daughter Hannah Waller, the president
of Amnesty International UNH. She described him as a "huge inspiration
of why I want to do the work I want to."
The talk was filled with anecdotes from his experiences researching
genocide, from exhuming mass graves in Bosnia to interviewing the
perpetrators of Rwandan Genocide. Dr. Waller presented his lecture
through PowerPoint that touched upon the three main points of his
research.
His first point addressed what the historical scope of genocide and
what it looks like today.
Waller described the 20th century as "the age of genocide," in which
the greatest mass killings and ethnic slaughters were carried out,
from the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide and
the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
"The conservative estimate is 60 million killed in genocide in the
20th century," Waller said. "People who thought they were protected by
their state, but their state turned on them and tried to kill them."
Waller next addressed whom it was that carried out the acts of
atrocity. He was careful to distinguish between architects responsible
for the policy or the bureaucrats who implemented it, but rather the
rank and file who killed the victims in person.
"There is never a case where a regime cannot find people to carry out
killings," Waller said.
There is no definitive answer to know how many killers it takes to
carry out genocide, but most of the guilty parties, which often number
in the thousands, are never brought to justice.
Waller addressed what he believes to be the myths surrounding
genocide. He disputed the idea that ideology is the basis for evil
behavior, as he believes that not everyone is imprinted in the exact
same way and may well be motivated by other emotions, such as greed.
He also mentioned the idea that the way we think influences how we
behave is misleading, when actually modern research suggests that how
we act affects how we think.
"The reason for slavery in America was for economic purposes, but
afterwards racial ideas of superiority were adopted to justify the
existence of slavery," Waller said.
The idea that perpetrators are purely pathological (the "Bad Nazi
Thesis") was proved to be inaccurate at the Nuremburg trials where the
defendants were given personality and intelligence tests, with results
that placed all but one of the defendants as having above average
intelligence.
Waller quoted W.H. Auden, saying that "evil is unspectacular and it is
always human" to describe how he came to realize that the origins for
most of the perpetrators that he interviewed were remarkably ordinary.
"I was struck more by the ordinariness of who they are, of their life
outside of the evil that they have committed," Waller said.
Towards the end of the lecture Waller discussed why he believes the
study of genocide matters. He stressed the importance of understanding
and humanizing the perpetrators, who had not done the same for their
victims.
"This is not to emphasize, sympathize or apologize for the evil
they've committed, but to understand why they commit these types of
atrocities," Waller said. "If we can understand how ordinary people
become capable of this extraordinary evil, we can start to understand
the ways to shift that behavior in a different direction."
Dr. Waller is a social psychologist and professor at the Cohen Center
of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College, a department
that is one of the oldest for Holocaust research studies in the
country. He is the author of the book Becoming Evil: How Ordinary
People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, which is scheduled for a
third edition release this year.
"I study the worst thing in the world, maybe, but what I'm hopeful and
optimistic about is that what I study is a problem created by humans,"
Waller said. "If it's a problem created by humans, it's a problem that
can be solved by humans and I absolutely think it's a problem we can
overcome."
Amnesty International UNH and UNH STAND sponsored the lecture.
http://www.tnhonline.com/news/becoming-evil-speaker-addresses-nature-of-genocide-1.3166371#.U2Pxf8aKDIU
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress