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In 20 years of teaching and researching genocide studies, Frank Chalk has sought to better comprehend and help others understand the causes of the evil that men do

b y   J u l i a  G e d e o n   M a t u s k y

For those of us in the modern Western World, a bad day may mean dealing with a disgruntled customer or getting stuck in traffic. When your job, however, is researching and teaching about the systematic murder of thousands or millions of men, women and children, the criteria for defining a bad day change. The unthinkable questions hound you: How can one group of people set out to completely eliminate another? How can human beings do such things to other human beings? For the past 20 years, Concordia history and genocide studies professor Frank Chalk has been grappling with these issues and inspiring others to do the same. It’s a tough task, yet there’s nothing that he would rather do.

Chalk, 63, acknowledges that the work occasionally gets to him. "Sometimes I cry," he admits. "I’m reading a memoir or a book about a particular set of victims, and the tears are just pouring down onto the pages." Together with colleague Kurt Jonassohn — who retired in 1997 — Chalk began teaching History and Sociology of Genocide in 1980, and has since made it his field of expertise. He says, "I try not to lose my human feeling but to keep my eye on the goal of improving people’s lives. Therefore, it’s important to remain focused and analytical."

Rather than show signs of weariness from his study of the most brutal aspects of human nature, Chalk’s energy increases as he launches into a spirited discussion of why one example of genocide took place. His voice becomes more intense when he talks about what has to be done to prevent such tragedies from occurring again, and how the course has allowed others to take such steps. On one recent day, Chalk e-mailed assistance to a former student working on her PhD at Oxford, contacted the BBC Trust to arrange for help for another student who wants to use radio broadcasts to improve democracy in Ukraine, and met with a doctoral student and an Israeli scholar to compare notes on the Holocaust museums in Israel, Auschwitz and Washington.

It was sociology professor Kurt Jonassohn who came up with the idea for the genocide course, which was to become a full-year course that examines genocide from the time of the ancient Assyrians to the present day, the first comparative course on the subject ever offered at a university. During his travels in Europe, Jonassohn realized that sociology offered courses on every deviance imaginable — except genocide. Over one of their regular cups of coffee, Jonassohn asked Chalk if he knew of a historian who might like to become involved in the course. Chalk immediately said he would.

Frank Chalk had already been interested in the subject. His first exposure to the effects of genocide came as a 10-year-old living in the Bronx, when his father invited a cousin to live with the family. The young Chalk found this woman in her twenties to be delightful company, exotic with her European accent, but also mysterious. He coul  not understand why for no apparent reason she would break down in tears. He asked his parents about her crying and they explained that she had lost her family in Auschwitz. "Knowing her story sensitized me," Chalk says. "When I was at the University of Wisconsin, I studied U.S. foreign policy and the history of Africa, but I also tried to read the literature on the Holocaust as it came out." However, when a professor invited Chalk to work on Holocaust-related issues, he refused because he wanted to concentrate his studies on American foreign policy towards Third World countries.

By 1978, when Jonassohn approached Chalk, now a history professor at Concordia, about the genocide course, world events had forced Chalk to take greater notice of mass murder  More than 1 million people had been killed in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) in 1971. A year later, between 100,000 and 300,000 Hutus were murdered in Burundi. Between 1975 and 1978, 3 million Cambodians were slain. These tragedies, together with the broadcast of the television series The Holocaust, heightened Chalk’s awareness and concern about genocide. Chalk also continued to teach courses on U.S. foreign policy and American and African history, but Jonassohn steered much of his attention to the research and teaching of genocide

Over more coffee, Chalk and Jonassohn discussed their plans, which first involved researching what had already been done in the field. To their surprise, they discovered that no university offered a comparative course, only studies on the Holocaust or other specific examples. "The fact that Kurt was a sociologist meant that we began to ask questions from the very beginning about a meaningful typology of genocide in history," Chalk explains. "That necessitated a larger sample of cases." 

By the fall of 1980, Chalk and Jonassohn were ready to offer the course. In addition to combining disciplines, they opted to both be in the classroom. "Since in this field, as in many others, there were no final answers, we would take different positions to make the class more interesting," Jonassohn recalls. Although students had a mixed reaction to the approach, many, Chalk relates, "found it wonderful to see professors debating strongly and still teaching the class as a team." The professors’ most fundamental disagreement related to human nature. "Kurt assumed that human beings had to learn in order to kill," Chalk says. "I felt it was a natural instinct that regimes encouraged through propaganda."

The course has been popular from the start. Student Brenda Fewster, BA 97, who recently completed her master’s thesis on why the Americans supported the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia from 1978 to 1982, knew after her first class with Chalk that this was an area she wanted to study. "He presents extensive information with extreme clarity and inspires you with an urgency to act," she says. "You know you won’t stop genocide on your own, but you don’t have to be a helpless bystander either. You can write letters to your MP or take other action."

The classes’ student population has reflected Montreal’s cultural diversity. "These are people who care about human rights, not students with an ethnic agenda," Chalk says. The course has opened up discussion within families whose members have experienced genocide. In some cases, the subject had never been mentioned. "Suddenly these students understand for the first time the environment in which they had grown up," he says, conveying his excitement by leaning slightly forward as he talks.

The textbook contains no photographic reproductions, "what I would call the pornography of cadaver pictures."

Chalk also becomes elated when he relates how the course led to Concordia holding the Montreal Inter-University Seminar on Mass Murder in History from 1982 to 1985. Faculty from Montreal’s English and French universities, as well as from Ottawa, Vermont and elsewhere, gathered at Concordia once a month to present and discuss analyses. During this time, Concordia had invited Norman Cohn, a genocide expert from Sussex University in England, as a visiting professor, along with his wife Vera, a scholar in Russian history. "These were bar none the most stimulating intellectual experiences I’ve ever enjoyed in Montreal," Chalk recalls. "The mix of specialists from different disciplines who came together at the genocide nexus was extraordinary."

The talks led to Chalk, Jonassohn and others forming the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies. Founded in 1986, the Institute is a research centre of Concordia’s Faculty of Arts and Science, based in the departments of history and sociology. It has become recognized worldwide for its development, collection and dissemination of information about genocide through research, teaching and publication. The Institute encourages research by organizing workshops and seminars, and by offering the use of its research resources to students and visiting scholars. Chalk is its co-director. He is also the current president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. Over a lot more coffee, Chalk and Jonassohn organized the research they had gathered for their course and in 1990 published The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies. It contains no photographic reproductions. Chalk and Jonassohn did not want to desensitize students by showing images of bodies. "We want them to feel empathy for the victims, but not to immerse themselves in what I would call the pornography of cadaver pictures," Chalk explains. "We want them to think analytically." 

Chalk beams when he thinks of the course’s graduates becoming concerned citizens, parents, and public policy shapers and makers — people who possess the information to make the world a better place and in many cases are doing so. "Our students have won fellowships at the highest level," he says. He shows equal pride in related accomplishments. "We attract graduate students from all the world to study with us. Our library has a fantastic collection on various cases of genocide in history. Wherever genocide is analyzed, Concordia is on the lips of students and scholars."

Over the 20 years of teaching the course, Chalk has observed the notion of international humanitarian intervention gaining acceptance. "After millions of unnecessary deaths, public opinion around the world has begun to recognize that the boundaries of humanity are more important than the boundaries of the state," he says, but quickly adds that the world remains guilty of delivering too little too late.

Chalk’s wife, Jean, notices that he eats more than he would like when he becomes stressed about a topic he is researching or teaching. Other times, he needs to immerse himself in social activities to get a break. However, these distractions are infrequent. "He’s looking for ways to anticipate potential genocides and avoid them," she explains. "That gives him a positive way to view his work rather than just looking at the negative side of what happened in the past."

Chalk relates a discussion he recently had with a friend who asked how he could sleep at night knowing what he does about people. Chalk says his year of teaching in Nigeria and extensive travels in the Third World have exposed him to the terrible poverty and abysmal conditions under which people struggle to live and maintain their dignity. "Canada, the United States, Western Europe and a few other areas are islands of security and sensitivity in a world that is largely a place of chaos and cruelty," he concludes. "The people who need our help don’t want us to become too exhausted to work. So it’s a duty to sleep, even though it’s not always easy."

Julia Gedeon Matusky, BA 89, is a Montreal journalist.

If you have any comments about this article or on genocide studies, contact Howard Bokser, (514) 848-4856, howardb@alcor.concordia.ca

Motives Behind Genocide: The Chalk/Jonassohn Typology

Frank Chalk believes that there lies within each of us the potential to commit genocide. He says this dark side of human nature awakens when a combination of economic catastrophes, political disasters and social upheaval makes a segment of the population desperate for change. Then a regime’s propaganda can effectively motivate people to kill another identifiable group.

Such a situation existed in Germany after the First World War. "It was unthinkable to some Germans that they could lose a war, especially to the Americans, who they considered to be relatively uncivilized," Chalk relates. "They concluded that some evil enemy from within to whom they were too kind, too gentle, too naïve, had betrayed them, and that they must never make those mistakes again." Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn have attributed four basic sets of motives to the perpetrators of genocide throughout history. Sometimes more than one set is present, but the typology is useful in examining the causes of genocide.

Elimination of a threat: An example would be the annihilation of the people of Carthage in 146 B.C. They had successfully attacked the Romans twice. The Romans provoked a third attack so that they could justify eliminating their enemy. "Rome was in absolute terror that some day Carthage would capture Rome," says Chalk.

Economic gain: Specifically, the building of an empire by acquiring the land and resources of a vanquished foe. By uniting the Mongol tribes, Genghis Khan was able to annex northern China, central Asia, Iran and southern Russia in the early 13th century. Similarly, the destruction of many of the native peoples in the New World occurred because they resisted the seizure of their land.

Creation of terror among surrounding peoples: The earliest example of this occurred when the people of Melos refused to pay tribute to Athens, even though Athens warned that not doing so would result in death. The Athenians could not accept such resistance because it might encourage the people on other islands to do the same. Therefore, they killed all of the men of Melos, and enslaved the women and children and dispersed them so they ceased to exist as a people. "It makes finding the Venus de Milo on Melos so ironic," Chalk notes. "This great symbol of ancient culture is actually a remnant of a civilization that perpetrated one of the earliest genocides in recorded history.."

Fulfilment of an ideology, theory or belief system: For example, the Armenian genocide in 1915 was aimed at creating a new kind of Turkish state. Its motive was to eliminate those people who were different from the ideal type of Turkic citizen. "Often, in ideologically motivated genocides, the selection of victim is based on the idea that the victim represents the opposite of the ideal citizen of the new state," Chalk says. "In the case of the Holocaust, that's very clear: Jews, Gypsies and Slavs were regarded as the antitheses of the ideal Aryan." Chalk adds that sometimes the belief is political rather than religious, such as when Stalin justified the killing of 5 million to 7 million Ukrainians by stereotyping them as unruly Kulaks."

— Julia Gedeon Matusky

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