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Associate Professor of Law Dr. Roger Alford and Visiting Professor Michael Bazyler stood in the courtroom used by the prosecutors in the Nuremburg trials for the 60th anniversary of those trials. They started talking about holding a conference on genocide at Pepperdine University’s School of Law.
More than a year later, the School of Law joined with the Simon Wiesenthal Center to organize and co-host a three-day conference on genocide, religion and law. The center is an L.A.-based Jewish human rights organization that maintains offices in New York, Palm Beach, Toronto, Buenos Aires, Paris and Jerusalem.
The conference was held at both the law school, and the center in Los Angeles and took place from Sunday to Tuesday. Sunday’s activities were held at the center, while the Monday and Tuesday events were held at the law school in Malibu.
The conference cost non-students $125 and students $50, with an optional $65 per plate dinner Monday. The fees covered breakfasts, lunches and the Sunday reception at the center.
The conference had many keynote speakers, including Distinguished Professor of Political Science Dr. Dan Caldwell and Provost Darryl Tippins. Although Caldwell and Tippins were the only lecturers from Pepperdine, School of Law Dean Kenneth Starr, Political Science Professor Dr. Chris Soper and Assistant Professor of History Dr. Jeffrey Zalar introduced other speakers, while Alford spoke at the introduction ceremony and moderated several panels.
The School of Law started to work on human rights initiatives about three years ago. Alford said the conference was the logical extension of those efforts.
Pepperdine approached the center initially, and was met with enthusiasm about the idea. A committee was formed to set up and organize the entire event. Alford and Bazyler served as co-chairs of that committee.
“We formed a committee that decided on the themes and emphases of the conference,” Alford said. “From there, we filled the different positions with experts, and raised the money to pay the speakers.”
The committee decided to make the focus of the talks all cases of genocide in the past hundred years. The emphases were on the four groups of people involved with genocide: victims, perpetrators, resisters and bystanders.
Caldwell, who spoke on the topic of collective resistance specifically in the Darfur case, said that since 1955, there have been 29 cases of genocide in the world.
“Sadly, it [genocide] has become a rather common feature of contemporary international relations,” Caldwell said.
Caldwell and Zalar both extended invitations to their classes to attend the conference. Caldwell said that only a few of his students attended the conference.
“Not that many students showed up,” Caldwell said. “But the ones that came have become much more aware of genocide.”
Zalar said that more of his own students came to the events because they are naturally more interested in the subject.
“Since they are actually taking a course on genocide, they are more likely to show up,” Zalar said.
Zalar teaches the course “Lessons of Genocide in the 20th Century” this semester, which is a broad study of the cases of genocide in the past century.
“The course focuses on genocide as a topic, and the conference focused on the theme of religion and genocide,” Zalar said.
Senior Melissa Herr is enrolled in Zalar’s course, and also attended the conference. She said she enjoyed the conference, but felt that more people should have attended. It is estimated that about 120 total people attended the conference.
“The biggest shame of the conference was that more Seaver students and faculty didn’t come,” Herr said. “The school puts on really good events like this one. It’s too bad that more people don’t take advantage of them.”
Herr thought the presentations were a great experience.
“Rabbi [Harold] Schulweis’ lecture on the study of goodness really affected me,” Herr said. “It served as a call to action, as well as a call for reflection.”
Alford thought that the conference did a good job of not only educating the attendants on genocide, but of creating new relationships with religious groups in the community.
“One of the main goals of the conference was to build bridges with different groups in the community,” Alford said. “There was a wonderful reception with many of the different religious groups. Building those bridges was one of the wonderful benefits of the conference.”
Submitted 02-15-2007
MALIBU, CA
