Christian Davenport
Professor of Peace Studies, Political Science, and Sociology
Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies
Sixteen years ago, the world watched as Rwanda descended into large-scale violence that left up to a million people dead. This was followed by massive out-migration (nearly half the country), untold amounts of internal displacement, and a deluge of articles, TV news features, movies, and commentary from human rights activists, political leaders, and ordinary people from around the world.
Exactly what happened during Rwanda’s hundred days of horror? Christian Davenport has spent more than a decade researching this question. His answer takes all the elements of what has become the conventional story — civil war, genocide, ethnic conflict, refugees, French UN missions, Tutsi rebels, the Hutu army — and combines them in unexpected ways. His research turns on its head the way we understand Rwanda, political violence, intervention, and the study of conflict itself.
Christian Davenport is a scholar of political conflict, from genocide to domestic spying. He directs two research and action projects: the Radical Information Project and Stop Our States. He is the author or editor of four books: State Repression and the Domestic Democratic Peace, Media Bias, Perspective and State Repression, Repression and Mobilization, and Paths to State Repression.
Free and open to the public.
A light lunch will be available before the lecture.