I attended Jacob Caponi’s Genocide in Rwanda talk on September 12 in the glass classroom at Smith-Steeb. It was a very interesting presentation about the Rwandan genocide. He did a good job of giving us a concise summary of a very complex series of events; he explained enough for us to understand his research. 

I had read We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families in middle school, and had a pretty strong background on the Rwandan genocide, but it’s always cool to get a different perspective on the topic. Jacob’s work (and his presentation, but to a lesser extent) focused on the role of women during the genocide. Some of the stuff he said about biased assumptions – such as the normal line of thinking regarding a genocide is that it was perpetrated by men – was very thought-provoking. He didn’t get to explain a ton more than just that what he did research on, unfortunately. I would have been interested in hearing more. 

It ultimately wasn’t super impactful on me, because I knew a lot about the topic and am not the type to get upset about something like this, regardless of the horror of the events. I try to study history with a purely critical lense, rather than emotional. This is obviously an international topic, and it’s important to know about and be able to discuss topics like these that are still relevant to our world today, particularly the idea of class conflict.