Founding Co-Directors

Frank Chalk

Frank Chalk is Professor of History and Director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) at Concordia University. Dr. Chalk is co-author, with Kurt Jonassohn, of The History and Sociology of Genocide (Yale U.P., 1990), an associate editor of the 3-volume, Macmillan Reference USA Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity (2004), consulting editor of Gale's "Genocide and Persecution" series (2011-), and is a past pres. of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and the Canadian Association for African Studies. Prof. Chalk has been a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC and a Fulbright Professor in Nigeria.. Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership to Prevent Mass Atrocities, co-authored with Roméo Dallaire, Kyle Matthews and others, was published by McGill-Queen's University Press in August 2010. Dr. Chalk's current research focuses on radio and TV broadcasting in the incitement and prevention of genocide, mobilizing the domestic Will to Intervene (W2I), in cooperation with Gen. Dallaire, and an SSHRC-funded project on the life stories of Montrealers who escaped from persecution and mass atrocity crimes. Other recent publications include "Le Service hongrois de la BBC et le sauvetage des juifs de Hongrie," in the book, La résistance aux génocides. De la pluralité des actes de sauvetage, Jacques Semelin, Claire Andrieu, Sarah Gensburger (eds.) (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2008), (published in English as Resisting Genocide: The Multiple Forms of Rescue by Columbia University Press, November 2010), with Danielle Kelton, "Mass Atrocity Crimes in Darfur and The Response of Government of Sudan Media to International Pressure," in Crisis in Darfur, Amanda Grzyb, ed. (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2009), and "Monitoring African Governments' Domestic Media to Predict and Prevent Mass Atrocities: Opportunities and Obstacles," in Robert Rotberg (editor), Mass Atrocity Crimes: Preventing Future Outrages (Brookings Institution Press in association with the Harvard Kennedy School Program on Intrastate Conflict and the World Peace Foundation, 2010). Contact: drfrank@alcor.concordia.ca URL: http://migs.concordia.ca

Kurt Jonassohn
Kurt Jonassohn, Professor of Sociology (Emeritus), Concordia University, is a founding co-director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS). In the area of comparative studies of genocide he has published, with Frank Chalk, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies (Yale, 1990) and, with Karin Solveig Björnson, Genocide and Human Rights Violations in Comparative Perspective (Transaction, 1998), in addition to journal articles and book chapters. He is also an Associate Editor of the Encyclopedia of Genocide (ABC-CLIO, 1999). In the past he was secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association (1970-1974) and an executive secretary of the International Sociological Association (1974-1982). He is currently engaged, with Mervin Butovsky, in collecting unpublished memoirs of Holocaust survivors in Canada that are being made available in the Concordia Archives and on this web site: Holocaust Survivor Memoirs