Genocide Scholar on Auschwitz to Appear on PBS/BBC Special

Newswise — Leading genocide scholar and Africana studies professor Edward Kissi, will be one of the featured scholars in the six-hour PBS/BBC presentation of Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State, scheduled to air in the U.S. and Europe Jan. 19, 2005. Jan. 27 marks the 60th anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz in 1945.

A native of Ghana, Kissi is an internationally recognized scholar on the history of international human rights law and genocide, particularly relating to Africa. Most recently, he contributed an entry on Benito Mussolini’s use of poison gas as a weapon of war in Ethiopia to the first-ever Macmillan Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, set for release in Jan. 2005.

“Auschwitz and the countless atrocities committed by the Nazis serves as a time in history that holds important lessons for the many tragedies we see today,” Kissi said. “More than ever, it is vital to humankind that we revisit what happened in the concentration camps to explore resolutions to what we have seen in Rwanda and what we are seeing in Sudan.”

A prolific scholar and author, Kissi also teaches several African history courses, including History and Theory of Genocide and Introduction to the Black Experience. His forthcoming book Revolution and Genocide in the Third World, a comparative study of social revolutions in Ethiopia and Cambodia, will be published in 2005. In addition to his ongoing interest in comparative studies of genocide and human rights, Kissi is currently exploring contemporary topics, such as the responses of African governments and opinion leaders to the recurrence of genocide in Rwanda from 1964 to 1994.

Kissi researched the Ethiopian and Cambodian revolutions in the 1970s as an Andrew W. Mellon post-doctoral fellow at Yale University’s Genocide Studies Program. He earned his B.A. in history and classics at the University of Ghana, Legon; his M.A. in diplomatic history at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada; and his Ph.D. in history at Concordia University, Montreal.