Teaching About Evil and Politics Using Case Studies of Genocide

In his Nobel acceptance speech on December 10th, President Obama stated firmly: “. . . make no mistake: evil does exist in the world.” And no matter what they came to think of his ‘axis of evil” policies, very few Americans disagreed with President Bush on the night of 9/11 when he told us: “Today, our nation saw evil.” These instances of politicians on the world stage freely using the term “evil” suggest a near universal acceptance of the existence of evil in the world. Yet, political science rarely examines the role of evil in politics and political science classes rarely deal with the subject. If we accept the existence of such a phenomenon, and leave the debate over the root of evil to the theologians, political scientists are left to answer a very important question: what is the impact of evil on the collective actions of humans in the political realm? Through the use of a case study this paper explores the creation of a class in political science that aims to engage students in answering this question. The case study for this paper is the Evil and Politics class at Lynchburg College, a private liberal arts college in south central Virginia with an enrollment around 2,200 students. However, the author argues that the lessons learned and questions raised in this paper are relevant to any sized public or private institution interested in educating students capable of engaging the world. This particular course employs the social science method of indirect observation to answer the question by assigning students a number of readings, such as Elie Wiesel’s Night, that relate, in their own words, the experiences of either victims or perpetrators during situations that most everyone would label as evil. Genocide is one of those political situations that most everyone feels comfortable describing as evil, so the course uses two case studies of genocide in the 20th century, the attempted destruction of European Jewry in Poland during the 1940s and the mass murder of Tutsis in Rwanda during 1994, as the basis for the semester’s work. Using readings from both victims and killers students are encouraged through a variety of assignments to look for patterns that help them answer the following questions: How do we know when we are dealing with evil in our midst? What is the impact of evil on our political interactions? And, what are the best ways to deal with evil in our midst? The class opens with a section of readings from a variety of disciplines including political science, psychology, literature, philosophy, and theology that provide a number of different perspectives on evil and possible solutions. The second section asks students to deal with the question: do humans need government to combat evil? A little over half the semester is spent covering the two case studies of genocide by assigning students readings that describe living with evil in the words of actual victims and killers. Books such as Jean Hatzfeld’s Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak and Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak are used to cover study the Rwandan experience with evil. While first person accounts are used as much as possible, most victims cannot speak and many killers have an incentive to remain silent. Therefore, students are also assigned some excellent second-hand accounts of interviews with victims or killers such as Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men. The last section of the course seeks to provide students with some perspectives on surviving evil by reading first-hand accounts of surviving genocide such as Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. The primary focus of this paper will be in providing a detailed discussion of the pedagogy used in this class on evil and politics and the characteristics of evil that are brought out through the readings. However, a secondary aim of the paper will be to report and discuss how the effectiveness of the course was assessed in the past and to further the conversation on how non-traditional classes such as this can be assessed. Within this discussion the author will present a model for assessing this course based on Fred Alford’s What Evil Means to Us.