Grant To Fund Genocide Study

The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government has received over two million dollars from Humanity United in order to fund research on genocide and the prevention of mass atrocities.

Carr Center Director Sarah B. Sewall will lead the research project, which aims to develop methods to stop genocide through partnerships with U.S. military planners. The grant, announced last Friday, will fund research over a three-year period.

The Carr Center was founded in 1999 to prepare Kennedy School students for public service careers and to research solutions to public policy problems. Humanity United’s $2,100,000 grant is one of several the Carr Center has received since its founding, including a $337,600 grant from the Carnegie Corporation and a $245,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Sewall has been working with military and human rights communities on military intervention since 2000. This grant will make it possible for her to focus on the specific area of military intervention in the face of mass atrocity. she said.

The project is intended to reconsider the ways in which the general public and military view genocide.

Sewall said the project hopes to prevent genocide instead of addressing the problem after the fact.

She first plans to develop a practical strategy for genocide prevention with the U.S. Army’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute and then apply that concept to actual scenarios of mass atrocity.

After developing a plan, the project will coordinate with a variety of governmental and non-governmental organizations, Sewall said. She added that the project will eventually also encompass regional and international organizations.

“It’s really gratifying to be able to bring together different perspectives and different skill sets to help solve a widely-acknowledged problem, and that’s something that the Carr Center is uniquely privileged to do,” Sewall said.

In a press release, President of Humanity United Randy Newcomb said that Sewall’s research is particularly relevant in light of the situation in Darfur.

Jacqueline Bhabha, executive director of the University Committee on Human Rights Studies at the Carr Center, said that the grant will help support important research, but that more funding for human rights research is much needed.

“I think Harvard has an extraordinary strength of people working towards human rights issues...But I think institutional support is not actually as substantial as it might be, and I think that is particularly true for students, not only for [undergraduate] students but for Kennedy school students,” she said.

Lois E. Andreasen, executive director of the Carr Center, said that the grant is a step towards this goal.

“Humanity United certainly gave us adequate funding for this particular project,” Andreasen said. “But of course I’m passionate about the idea of human rights, so there’s never enough funding for human rights.”

—Arianna Markel contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Sue Lin can be reached at suelin@fas.harvard.edu.