Covenant News

Nelson Lecture to Focus on Sudan Atrocities

CHICAGO, IL (August 12, 2005) - A member of the United States team that detailed atrocities in Darfur, Sudan, will share his experiences September 7 at North Park University in the first Burton Nelson Memorial Lecture.

Erik Markusen was a member of the Atrocity Documentation Team assembled by the State Department to travel to the Chad-Sudan border in 2004. He is the senior research fellow with Department of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Copenhagen.

Markusen also will speak September 8 on "The State of Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Scandinavia." Lectures on both evenings will be at 7:30 p.m. in the Anderson Chapel. They are free of charge.

Markusen's publications include The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat, with Robert Jay Lifton; and The Holocaust and Strategic Bombing: Genocide and Total War in the Twentieth Century, with David Kopf. He is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Genocide Research and the Journal of Human Rights. His current work focuses on the genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Sudan and the work of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

The family of Burton Nelson will attend the first lecture to honor the late professor. Donald Wagner, the director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at North Park, says it is fitting that Nelson be honored with a lecture series. The former North Park Theological Seminary professor of ethics was honored around the world for his commitment to Christian ethics and holocaust studies. He died in March 2004.

Wagner says he hopes contributors will be interested in funding the lecture so that it can be presented annually. Sponsoring the two-evening event are the Centers for Scandinavian Studies, Africana Studies, Middle Eastern Studies and the Center for Justice Ministries at North Park University.

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