Spielberg launches center for research on genocide

University of Southern California and filmmaker Spielberg, founder of the USC Shoah Foundation, establish Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

By TOM TUGEND
Director Steven Spielberg speaks at a special General Assembly session marking International Holocaust Day, January 27, 2014. (photo credit: screenshot)
Director Steven Spielberg speaks at a special General Assembly session marking International Holocaust Day, January 27, 2014.
(photo credit: screenshot)
LOS ANGELES – Filmmaker Steven Spielberg on Friday announced the establishment of a Center for Advanced Genocide Research at the University of Southern California.
The center’s primary goals will be to investigate the conditions leading to genocides and how to intervene in time to prevent such mass violence and slaughter.
Specifically, the center will focus on three aspects of genocides, said Spielberg, who established USC Shoah Foundation 20 years ago, following release of his Oscar-winning movie Schindler’s List. He was joined by USC President C.L. Max Nikias for the press conference on campus.
The three announced research areas are resistance to genocide and mass violence; violence, emotion and behavioral change; and digital genocide studies.
“The USC Shoah Foundation has made tremendous progress during its first 20 years, but its work is far from finished,” Spielberg said. “The Institute has collected and indexed nearly 52,000 testimonies and established educational programs, such as iWitness and Teaching with Testimony that bring people who experienced history into classrooms around the world. “Now comes the next significant chapter, one that establishes the institute as one of the leading academic centers of excellence for the study of the Holocaust and genocides. The potential is there for groundbreaking research.”
The trove of 52,000 testimonies deal primarily with the Holocaust, but also contains eyewitness accounts of the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi genocide and the 1937 Nanjing massacre.
Material on the Armenian and Cambodian genocides will be added to the archives next year.
USC history professor Wolf Gruner will serve as director of the new center. Its first major conference, “Media, Memory and Technology: Exploring the Trajectories of ‘Schindler’s List,’” will be held in November.