Alliance for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide

Alliance for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide The Alliance for the Study of the Holocaust was formed at Sonoma State University in 1982 on behalf of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust.

The Alliance for the Study of the Holocaust was formed in 1982 on behalf of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust and the need to tell their stories and for others to learn from their experiences. Those who began this collaborative effort between the community and members of the Sonoma State University faculty promised to let the world know of the atrocities that had occurred. The initial int

ention was primarily to learn the facts, act on them, and never forget. As a result of these efforts, a highly successful annual lecture series on the Holocaust and Genocide was created at Sonoma State University. As a University-community partnership, the Board includes members of the community, University faculty and administrators, and students who have participated in the Lecture Series. In 2010, the name of the Alliance was changed to the Alliance for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide to reflect its revised mission and its continuing educational commitment to include all those affected by genocide.

May 12, 2026Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda (Virtual Lecture)Her Excellency Mathilde MukantabanaRwandan Ambassador ...
05/06/2026

May 12, 2026
Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda (Virtual Lecture)

Her Excellency Mathilde Mukantabana
Rwandan Ambassador to the United States
Alexandre Kimenyi Memorial Lecture

Please join us on Tuesday, May 12th for the Alexandre Kimenyi Memorial Lecture, the final lecture in the 2026 lecture series on the Holocaust and Genocide from 4-5:15 p.m. in Stevenson Hall, Room 1301. Her Excellency Mathilde Mukantabana, Rwandan Ambassador to the United States, will return to tell the inspiring story of resilience and recovery in the aftermath of the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda VIRTUALLY VIA ZOOM.

Fluent in English, French, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi, Ambassador Mukantabana holds a Bachelor’s degree in History and Geography from the University of Burundi as well as a Master’s degree in Social Work with special emphasis in Community Organization, Planning and Administration and a Masters of Arts in History from California State University Sacramento.

Before her appointment, Ambassador Mukantabana was a tenured Professor of History at Consumnes River College in Sacramento, California from 1994 to 2013. She is also co-founder of Friends of Rwanda Association (F.O.R.A), a non-profit American relief association created in the wake of the 1994 Genocide Against Tutsi in Rwanda. Since its inception, F.O.R.A.’s dual purpose has been to expand the circle of friends of Rwanda and to support survivors of 1994 Genocide through a variety of initiatives and relief efforts.

In 1999, Ambassador Mukantabana started the academic program in Social Work at the National University of Rwanda under the aegis of United Nations for Development Programs (UNDP); and, until recently, taught a variety of subjects in their summer program. Ambassador Mukantabana has been a passionate community organizer for several decades and was a co-founder of many associations and organizations whose main purpose was to promote a positive engagement and collaboration of the Rwandan communities in the United States of America with other groups and organizations for the benefit of their respective countries.

Ambassador Mukantabana is a past board member and senior advisor of the Alliance for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide at SSU.

All Talks are Open to the Public In-Person and on Zoom.
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May 5, 2026Israel: What Went Wrong?Omer Bartov, Ph.D.Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Brown Universit...
04/29/2026

May 5, 2026
Israel: What Went Wrong?

Omer Bartov, Ph.D.
Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Brown University

Please join us on Tuesday, May 5th for the fourteenth lecture in the 2026 lecture series on the Holocaust and Genocide from 4-5:15 p.m. in Stevenson Hall, Room 1301. Omer Bartov, Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, will present “Israel: What Went Wrong?”

Born in Israel and educated at Tel Aviv University and St. Antony's College, Oxford, Omer Bartov's early research concerned the N**i indoctrination of the Wehrmacht and the crimes it committed in World War II, analyzed in his books, The Eastern Front, 1941-1945, and Hitler's Army. He then turned to the links between total war and genocide, discussed in his books Murder in Our Midst, Mirrors of Destruction, and Germany's War and the Holocaust. Professor Bartov is uniquely qualified to answer the question “What went wrong?”

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April 28, 2026: "ON CAMPUS VIEWING ONLY**My Sweet LandDr. Dzovinar Derderian, Director of the Armenian Studies Program, ...
04/22/2026

April 28, 2026: "ON CAMPUS VIEWING ONLY**
My Sweet Land

Dr. Dzovinar Derderian, Director of the Armenian Studies Program, U.C. Berkeley
Sareen Hairabedian, Filmmaker
Mary Dolbashian Davidian Genocide Education Lecture

Please join us on Tuesday, April 28th for the Mary Dolbashian Davidian Genocide Education Lecture in the 2026 lecture series on the Holocaust and Genocide from 4-5:15 p.m. in Stevenson Hall, Room 1301. We will present a film screening for Sareen Hairabedian’s My Sweet Land.

My Sweet Land is a coming-of-age story set against a multigenerational war in the post-Soviet Caucasus Mountains. It follows an 11-year-old boy named Vrej, growing up in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Vrej must learn the rules of war… But can he carry a nation’s hopes on his young shoulders? The film is a testament to the people of Artsakh, where hope and trauma had shaped their resilience across generations.

Sareen Hairabedian is an Armenian-Jordanian documentary filmmaker based in the U.S. My Sweet Land is her debut feature-length documentary featuring one child’s journey through disillusionment, trauma, and hope. Dr. Dzovinar Derderian, Executive Director of the Armenian Studies Program at U.C. Berkeley, is a social and cultural historian focusing on Armenians in the Middle East and the Caucasus.

**No LIVE STREAMING OR RECORDING ALLOWED FOR THIS FILM SCREENING** ON CAMPUS ATTENDANCE ONLY

April 21, 2026The Modern Grammar of Denial: Truth, Power, and the Armenian GenocideTaner Akçam, Ph.D.Inaugural Director,...
04/15/2026

April 21, 2026
The Modern Grammar of Denial: Truth, Power, and the Armenian Genocide

Taner Akçam, Ph.D.
Inaugural Director, Armenian Genocide Research Program
The Promise Armenian Institute, UCLA
Genocide Memorial Lecture

Please join us on Tuesday, April 21st for the Armenian Genocide Memorial Lecture in the 2026 lecture series on the Holocaust and Genocide from 4-5:15 p.m. in Stevenson Hall, Room 1301. Taner Akçam, the Inaugural Director of the Armenian Genocide Research Program of The Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA, will present “The Modern Grammar of Denial.”

Professor Akçam is widely recognized as one of the first Turkish scholars to write extensively on the Ottoman-Turkish Genocide of the Armenians in the early twentieth century. Previously he was the Kaloosdian and Mugar Chair in Modern Armenian History and Genocide in the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University.He is the founder of Krikor Guerguerian Online Archive, located at: wordpress.clarku.edu/guerguerianarchive. His latest book is Killing Orders: Talat Pasha’s Telegrams and the Armenian Genocide (Palgrave 2018).

All Talks are Open to the Public In-Person and on Zoom.
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April 14, 2026The Great Circassian Exile:　Home, Homesickness, and StorytellingSolen Sanli-VasquezSociology Instructor, S...
04/08/2026

April 14, 2026
The Great Circassian Exile:　Home, Homesickness, and Storytelling

Solen Sanli-Vasquez
Sociology Instructor, Santa Rosa Junior College

Please join us on Tuesday, April 14th for the eleventh lecture in the 2026 lecture series on the Holocaust and Genocide from 4-5:15 p.m. in Stevenson Hall, Room 1301. Dr. Solen Sanli-Vasquez will present “The Great Circassian Exile” which is about the expulsion of the people of Northwestern Caucasia from their homelands.

Dr. Solen Sanli-Vasquez received a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Koç University, Istanbul. She holds two Master’s degrees; one from the London School of Economics and one from The New School in New York City. She completed her Ph.D. at The New School in 2009. In 2020, she was an EPIC Community College Faculty Fellow at Stanford. She has been a Sociology Instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College since 2012.

Dr. Sanli-Vasquez’s ancestors came from the Caucasus and settled in Turkey. Her research interests lie at the intersections of mass media, gender, immigration, social stratification, and cultural citizenship. Her book, Women and Cultural Citizenship in Turkey: Mass Media and ‘Woman’s Voice’ Television, was published in 2015.

All Talks are Open to the Public In-Person and on Zoom.
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Tuesday, April 7, 2026In Pursuit of Justice in Post-Genocide GuatemalaJo-Marie Burt, Ph.D.Associate Professor, Schar Sch...
04/03/2026

Tuesday, April 7, 2026

In Pursuit of Justice in Post-Genocide Guatemala
Jo-Marie Burt, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Schar School of Policy and Government
George Mason University
Adele Zygielbaum Memorial Lecture

Please join us on Tuesday, April 7th for the Adele Zygielbaum Memorial Lecture in the 2026 lecture series on the Holocaust and Genocide from 4-5:15 p.m. in Stevenson Hall, Room 1301. George Mason University Professor Jo-Marie Burt will present “In Pursuit of Justice in Post-Genocide Guatemala.”

Jo-Marie Burt is associate professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. Professor Burt received her PhD in political science from Columbia University in 1999. She is a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a leading human rights research and advocacy organization. She was president of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) from 2023 to 2024 and is presently serving as past president.

As 2024-25 Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, she is completing a book manuscript entitled, In Pursuit of Justice in Post-Genocide Guatemala. She is author of Transitional Justice in the Aftermath of Civil Conflict: Lessons from Peru, Guatemala and El Salvador (DPLF, 2018) and is working on a new book entitled Post-Conflict Justice: Reckoning with the Legacies of Violence in Peru, Guatemala and El Salvador.

All Talks are Open to the Public In-Person and on Zoom.
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Wednesday April 1, 2026****Please note day change to Wednesday**How China’s Wartime Past is Shaping Its Present – and Fu...
03/31/2026

Wednesday April 1, 2026**

**Please note day change to Wednesday**

How China’s Wartime Past is Shaping Its Present – and Future:
History, Legacy, and Memory in China’s World War II
Rana Mitter, Ph.D.
St. Lee Professor of U.S. - Asia Relations
Harvard Kennedy School, John F. Kennedy School of Government
Dr. Peter Stanek Memorial Lecture in the History of the
Japanese Occupation of China and the War in the Pacific

Please join us on Wednesday, April 1st for the Dr. Peter Stanek Memorial Lecture in the History of the Japanese Occupation of China and the War in the Pacific in the 2026 lecture series on the Holocaust and Genocide from 4-5:15 p.m. in Stevenson Hall, Room 1301. Harvard Kennedy School ST Lee Chair in US – Asia Relations, Rana Mitter, will present “How China’s Wartime Past is Shaping Its Present.”

Professor Mitter is ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the author of several books, including Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II (2013) which won the 2014 RUSI/Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature, and was named a Book of the Year in the Financial Times and Economist. His latest book is China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism (Harvard, 2020).

His writing on contemporary China has appeared recently in Foreign Affairs, The Harvard Business Review, The Spectator, The Critic, and The Guardian. He has commented regularly on China in media and forums around the world, including at the World Economic Forum at Davos. His recent documentary on contemporary Chinese politics "Meanwhile in Beijing" is available on BBC Sounds. He won the 2020 Medlicott Medal for Service to History, awarded by the UK Historical Association. He previously taught at Oxford, and is a Fellow of the British Academy.

All Talks are Open to the Public In-Person and on Zoom.
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https://holocaust.sonoma.edu/annual-lecture-series

March 17, 2026Is a Policy of “Extermination” Genocide? The Long Shadow of the Irish FamineKathleen Noonan, Ph.D. Profess...
03/31/2026

March 17, 2026
Is a Policy of “Extermination” Genocide? The Long Shadow of the Irish Famine
Kathleen Noonan, Ph.D.
Professor Emerita of History, Sonoma State University
Elizabeth E. Bettelheim Family Foundation Lecture

Please join us on Tuesday, March 17th for the Elizabeth E. Bettelheim Family Foundation Lecture in the 2026 lecture series on the Holocaust and Genocide from 4-5:15 p.m. in Stevenson Hall, Room 1301. Sonoma State University Professor Emerita Kathleen Noonan will present “Is a Policy of “Extermination” Genocide? The Long Shadow of the Irish Famine.”

Dr. Noonan, a native of Bayonne, New Jersey, received her B.A. in History and English from Georgetown University. She received her M.A. in Modern and Early Modern European history and a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Santa Barbara. In addition to her work as a historian, she has extensive experience as an archivist and manuscript curator at Georgetown University and the University of California, Santa Barbara.

All Talks are Open to the Public In-Person and on Zoom.
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https://holocaust.sonoma.edu/annual-lecture-series

March 10, 2026 An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-73Benjamine Madley, P...
03/31/2026

March 10, 2026
An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-73
Benjamine Madley, Ph.D.
Professor of History, UCLA
Robert Harris Memorial Lecture

Please join us on Tuesday, March 10th for the Robert Harris Memorial Lecture in the 2026 lecture series on the Holocaust and Genocide from 4-5:15 p.m. in Stevenson Hall, Room 1301. UCLA History Professor Benjamine Madley will discuss his award-winning book, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873

Benjamin Madley is an historian of Native America, the United States, and colonialism in world history. Born in Redding, California, he spent much of his childhood in Karuk Country near the Oregon border where he became interested in relationships between colonizers and Indigenous peoples. Educated at Yale and Oxford, he writes about Native America as well as colonialism in Africa, Australia, and Europe, often applying a transnational and comparative approach.
Madley has authored or co-authored more than twenty journal articles and book chapters. His articles have appeared in The American Historical Review, California History, European History Quarterly, Journal of British Studies, Journal of Genocide Research, Pacific Historical Review, and The Western Historical Quarterly

Yale University Press published his first book, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873. This book received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History, the Raphael Lemkin Book Award from the Institute for the Study of Genocide, the Charles Redd Center / Phi Alpha Theta Award for the Best Book on the American West, the California Book Awards Gold Medal for Californiana, the Heyday Books History Award, and the Norman Neuerburg Award from the Historical Society of Southern California. It was also named a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, an Indian Country Today Hot List book, a Choice magazine Outstanding Academic Title, and a Caroline Bancroft History Prize Honor Book. True West Magazine named Madley the Best New Western Author of 2016.

All Talks are Open to the Public In-Person and on Zoom.
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https://holocaust.sonoma.edu/annual-lecture-series

March 10, 2026The N**i Genocide of the Roma:Told though Survivor Ceija Stojka’s ArtworkMichaela Grobbel, Ph.D.Professor ...
02/25/2026

March 10, 2026
The N**i Genocide of the Roma:
Told though Survivor Ceija Stojka’s Artwork
Michaela Grobbel, Ph.D.
Professor Emerita of German, Sonoma State

Please join us on Tuesday, March 3rd for the sixth lecture in the 2026 lecture series on the Holocaust and Genocide from 4-5:15 p.m. in Stevenson Hall, Room 1301. Dr. Michaela Grobbel will present “The N**i Genocide of the Roma Told though Survivor Ceija Stojka’s Artwork.”

Dr. Michaela Grobbel is a retired professor of German at Sonoma State University. Her research includes memory studies, in particular how Germans have been dealing with the N**i past. She also studied ethnic minorities in Germany, e.g. Jews, African-Germans, and Turkish-Germans. This led her to research the Roma ("Gypsies") in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and their fate during the N**i terror.

Dr. Grobbel has been particularly focusing on Romani self-expression through visual art, theater, and literature in the German-speaking countries. As a contributor to the book Roma Artist Ceija Stojka: What Should I Be Afraid of? (Hirmer, 2024), Grobbel examined Austrian artist Ceija Stojka (now deceased) who survived the N**i concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ravensbrück, and Bergen-Belsen. Through her research, Dr. Grobbel became a close friend to Stojka and visited her in Austria over many years.

Together with Dr. Lorely French from Pacific University in Oregon, she organized the first exhibit of Ceija Stojka's artwork in the USA in 2009, entitled “LIVE-DANCE-PAINT: Works by Romani (‘Gypsy’) Artist Ceija Stojka.” Stojka's art was shown at Sonoma State University, Pacific University, and a gallery in Vermont. Since then, her art has been exhibited at major art museums, galleries, and Holocaust museums.

Ceija Stojka warned all her life that "Auschwitz is only asleep but could be woken up anytime." It was very rare for a Romani woman and survivor to present her life experiences in the public and through art. Each painting is a memory image and tells a story. Stojka's art is unique and powerful; it reminds us to stay vigilant in order to help prevent more atrocities and genocides.

All Talks are Open to the Public In-Person and on Zoom.
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https://holocaust.sonoma.edu/annual-lecture-series

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Alliance For The Study Of The Holocaust And Genocide/℅ University Advancement/Sonoma State University/1801 East Cotati Avenue
Rohnert Park, CA
94928

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