GETTING TEENS TO TALK ABOUT RAPE

When my design students found out they’d be reading Fault Line—a new young adult novel by Christa Desir about underage drinking, gang-rape, and dysfunctional teen relationships—some were confused.

Christa introduced herself to my class as a writer, an editor of adult erotic romance novels, an experienced rape counselor, and a survivor of rape.

Her debut novel Fault Line is about a teenage boy, Ben, whose girlfriend, Ani, is gang-raped at a party he didn’t attend.

The students found Fault Line to be “powerful” and “eye-opening” but they also found its ending “unsatisfying.” Christa asked them to think about how high-schoolers might respond to the book. Teenagers would find the book “scary,” the undergrads. predicted; teenagers would respond by saying, “That wouldn’t happen to me.”

Writing About Rape

Christa explained why she chose to write a “rape book” from a teenage boy’s point of view. Teenage boys are the novel’s primary audience, because rape is too often framed as a women’s issue. “I wanted readers to identify with a boy. A boy who wasn’t a perpetrator. We need boys to engage with questions about rape.”

Through her true-to-life writing style, Christa manages to confront young readers with questions they might not usually consider.

The story of Ben and Ani is messy. The rape breaks their high-school romance, in part because Ani can’t remember what happened at the party. The rumor-mill at their school catches fire and, because she was drunk that night and dancing with strangers provocatively, Ani is blamed for the sexual violence committed against her.

“That’s what happens in the real world,” Christa told us. Teachers and the media and parents have become fixated on warning girls to wear the right clothes and say the right things and act a certain way. And what’s the hidden message? Girls, if you break the rules, if you wear the wrong outfit, flirt with boys, and talk about sex, then getting raped is your fault.

Reading About Rape

“It’s not enough just to teach our boys not to be rapists. Kids need to be responsible for every person at a party.” We need to teach young people to look out for each other. To speak up if they see something that’s getting out of hand and, if necessary, call the police. “For some reason, teenagers are not stopping this,” Christa said.

With a well-meaning young man as its protagonist, Fault Line explores male perspectives of rape culture. Ben wants to help the girl he loves, but he doesn’t know how and, despite his good intentions, he makes some mistakes. Ani is broken and there’s nothing Ben can do. In this way, Fault Line leads readers to “think about how we can help or harm survivors after rape.”

“We lose survivors sometimes.” Christa shared with us the true story of a rape survivor—a friend of a friend—who disappeared. “Nobody knows what happened to her.” In Fault Line, “the ending is left open, so we have the possibility that we lose Ani.”

But real life isn’t always what people want to read, Christa told us. The hard-hitting truths at the heart of Fault Line make the novel unattractive to high-school teachers who worry about introducing their students to taboo topics like rape and sexual violence and consensual sex. As if teenagers aren’t already exposed to all that. As if teenagers don’t need guidance and trusted adults to talk to.

Talking About Rape

Fault Line represents a gap in social programming for teenagers. The book reminds us that we need to design and promote programs that help young people stand up against a culture of “victim-blaming” and “slut-shaming.” Programs that help survivors of sexual violence to speak out about their experiences and break the taboos that allow a culture of rape to continue. Programs like The Voices and Faces Project, which led Christa to write Fault Line. (Christa donates 50% of her royalties from Fault Line to support Voices and Faces writing workshops for survivors of rape and sexual assault.)

Fault Line has some solid, steady sales, but the very taboos that the novel confronts may be preventing it from becoming the massive hit it needs to be. Fault Line doesn’t deliver a tidy moral message of right and wrong all neatly tied up in a positive, hopeful ending. But that’s what makes the book so important.

As the novel gets passed from reader to reader—perhaps often discreetly with a quiet “you need to read this”—people are starting to see this extraordinary book for what it is: Fault Line is a necessary story about the realities of rape with the potential to spark vital conversations, confront taboos, and affect real change within our culture of victim-blaming, shame, and silence.

If you read the novel—and I hope you do—keep Christa’s warning in mind: “There’s no happy ending.” She said it adamantly and she wasn’t only talking about Fault Line.

Class discussion with Christa Desir, author of Fault Line, February 27 2014.

This is the second part of a series on teaching about rape culture. Read part one, here: Laughing About Rape

TO MY TEACHER, MR. PASZEK

You were angry. “If you have ever called Dominic a fairy,” you snapped with your arms crossed, “get up right now and stand at the front of the class.”

I’d heard the fairy slur many times. Dominic was a musician. I’m sure you would have remembered him. He was slim and talented and softly spoken. When he sang, he sounded like a choirboy. For a few years at our all-boys-school on the northeastern edge of London, Dominic was one of my closest friends.

Dominic sat at his desk and looked at the floor, all eyes on him. You, our teacher, watched us as the classroom filled with the sound of scraping chairs as some of the boys started to stand.

I once called Dominic a fairy, too. I don’t know why. Dominic was my good friend, but that didn’t stop me from participating in teasing him. Blame high school culture, blame the ever-present homophobia, blame kids saying stupid things without thinking, but bullying is bullying.

And I found myself pushing back my chair and walking to the front of the room to join the majority of my classmates. Only a handful of students remained seated. You, Mr. Paszek, a young mathematics teacher who was new to our school, must have been astounded to watch most of your students standing, the backs of our school uniforms to the chalkboard, looking at Dominic with our collective embarrassment and regret.

That was 1992. I was almost 14 years old.

Today, I think you’d be proud to know, alongside classes on the Holocaust and genocide, I teach about rape culture and sexual health, college hazing and addiction, poverty and homelessness. And I teach about homophobic and transphobic bullying and their affects on depression and suicide amongst young people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT). I teach about the It Gets Better Project, a virtual support community for LGBT youth. The project’s message to its audience is clear: Don’t despair; You can survive the bullying; Your adult life is going to be great; You are amazing.

A week or so ago, I came across a video clip posted to Facebook that changed the way I think about fighting homophobia.

In 2008, in Oxnard, California, 15-year-old Lawrence King asked 14-year-old Brandon McInerney to be his Valentine. Two days later, in front of their classmates in the school computer lab, Brandon took out a gun and shot Lawrence in the head. Lawrence died in hospital and, in 2011, Brandon pleaded guilty to second-degree murder while the hate crime charges against him were dropped.

The recently released HBO documentary Valentine Road deals with the events surrounding the shooting. In one scene, Shirley Brown, a former teacher of murdered student Lawrence King, explains, “I knew his inclination. He had discussed it with me. When he asked me what to do about the situation, my response to him was Nothing, what to do about this situation is nothing, and to keep it private, and to dwell upon it.” Lawrence, it seems, had little support in coming out as gay.

Ms. Brown continues, “I relate to Brandon [the murderer] because I could see my own self being in that very same position. I don’t know if I would have taken a gun, but a good, swift kick in the butt might work really well.” In other words, Brown believed that it was Lawrence’s gay “behavior,” rather than Brandon’s prejudice, that led to Brandon’s violent response. According to his teacher, Lawrence King—the boy who asked another boy to be his Valentine—brought his murder upon himself.

And so, it seems, in schools around the world, the young bullies might not be the heart of the problem. Teachers and administrators, not to mention parents, need to see that their words and actions—and inactions—have immeasurable repercussions. They are the adults. They set the example.

You, Mr. Paszek, looked at us with deep disappointment and sadness as we stood at the front of your classroom in silence. We all returned to our seats knowing that calling Dominic a fairy was wrong.

Two or three years later, you—the young, funny, talented, energetic Mr. Paszek—died. A rumor about you—quietly confirmed by other teachers—spread through the school: “Mr. Paszek was gay; he died of AIDS.”

My high school’s response to your death was minimal. I can barely remember the announcement. There were no big speeches about you from our headmaster. There were no memorial ceremonies for you. There were no plaques for you. No flowers for you. No candles. No silent ovations. Only rumors and inadequate explanations leading to a continual silence. Almost denial.

This was mid-1990s Britain and, under Prime Minister Thatcher’s Conservative government and the 1988 passage of Section 28, all British schools were prohibited from “promoting”—i.e., “talking about”—homosexuality.

And there I was, a gay teenager learning about reproduction and teenage pregnancy with no way of talking to my teachers about my sexuality and my specific questions about safe gay sex and my fears about HIV and AIDS. The British law wasn’t struck down until 2003. I was 25.

Today across the U.S., conservative lawmakers continue to block anti-bullying legislation that would protect LGBT school students from harassment. And in many states across the country, schools continue to fire teachers for being gay or lesbian or transgender while continuing to employ, tolerate, and even promote teachers like Shirley Brown who blame homophobic violence, and even murder, on LGBT youth themselves.

At the time, Mr. Paszek, I was too young and too naive to realize the significance of your presence. When you died, our school did not honor you. Yet, as my teacher, you instilled in me values that I still hold today. You stood up for Dominic and against homophobia and, by doing so, you asked us—your students—to stand up, too.


(Note: The names of Mr. Paszek and Dominic have been changed to protect privacy.)

WHEN GUNS & SCHOOLS COLLIDE

“We’re not allowed to talk about what happened yesterday,” she says, “but I want you all to know that I hope you’re okay.”

What happened yesterday? I sit with my back against the classroom wall, trying to decipher the teacher’s vague words of condolence.

“I saw them,” one student calls out. “It was a drive-by.”

A shooting?

The teacher ignores the comment and begins the lesson.

After class, standing close to the metal detectors and armed school guards, I ask the teacher why the school has a policy of silence around shooting incidents. “If it’s gang related—” she starts to explain. Her voice trails off, distracted by students fighting in the hallway.

On the train-ride home, for the first time since I arrived in the U.S., I feel unsafe.

I moved to Chicago in September 2004. In the daylight, the skyscrapers reflect in the cold water of Lake Michigan. At night, the gay bars and cafes of the Boystown neighborhood are packed. In the winter, when the sun disappears by late afternoon and everyone walks with their hands in the pockets of their heavy coats, the cityscape is still beautiful and the bars are still busy, but the dark alleyways and side streets no longer feel like convenient shortcuts. I keep to the main roads, even though it means a few more minutes out in the sub-zero temperatures.

I return to the school, located twenty minutes from my new home, to conduct research on its after-school programs; programs designed in part to keep the teenagers off the streets and in part to help them learn marketable skills.

I jump when the school’s Vice-Principle bursts into the classroom and screams at two students to “Get the fuck out, you worthless pieces of shit,” because, “You don’t deserve the privilege of this program. You’re headed for prison.”

As the boys grab their coats and leave, they don’t say a word—clearly accustomed to being spoken to in this way—and I also say nothing, because I expect one of the teachers to speak up. But nobody does.

An hour or so later, I overhear a group of students discussing the recent shooting. When they realize I’m listening, they change the subject. In this school, to talk about gang violence is not allowed. To express how they feel about “what happened” is forbidden, even if the victims or shooters were their friends. They can’t voice aloud what they wish would be done about gun violence and gang culture in their neighborhoods. They can’t discuss what they are afraid of, or what they saw with their own eyes. And they can’t even begin to discuss possible solutions.

When I ask about the students and teachers in uniforms, I realize that the school is attached to a military academy where young teens are recruited and prepared for the U.S. army. And yet talking about guns and gangs is off limits.

I’m astounded when a teacher explains to me that talking about guns and gangs can lead to a formal detention—a full-day detention, where students must sit in silence from morning until mid-afternoon, staring forward, fed only jelly sandwiches, forbidden from going outside, forbidden from reading, forbidden from writing, forbidden from learning, forbidden from being listened to.

After nine years of living in Chicago, car alarms and buses breaking at traffic lights and the squeaking metal of the trains on their tracks and the smells of fuel mixed with waste in the underground stations all still remind me of London. But I now look left when crossing the street and I pronounce water with a softened 't' and I say elevator and candy and sidewalk, and I’ve learned to use most American spelling and punctuation.

But I still hold onto some British-isms. I teach my daughter English nursery rhymes. And I still pronounce it aluminium and I still ask for the loo and I still apologize if someone on a crowded train steps on my foot. And I still think of school as a safe place. A place where teenagers are encouraged to debate and challenge and think and talk, where they're spoken to with at least a little respect.

Facebook bleeds with the news of another mass-shooting. A man—who heard voices in his head and had a known history of “minor” shooting incidents—walked into a store and purchased a shotgun. Legally. Days later, he arrived at work—a secure Navy base near the nation’s capital—and he shot a dozen people dead before he too was killed.

When the President stands at his podium to reflect on this “unimaginable” violence—even though such incidents happen all the time and are, in fact, entirely imaginable—; when politicians call the victims of these shootings “heroes" and “patriots”—as if they chose to die in the name of their country—; and when journalists compare this latest mass-shooting to the recent elementary school shooting and a movie-theatre shooting and the daily drive-by shootings in Chicago, I find myself deeply frightened, mostly for my young daughter and her friends.

“We’re not allowed to talk about what happened yesterday.” We’re not allowed to challenge the so-called rights of Americans to hoard guns, military grade guns included. We’re not allowed to imagine a real change in gun control policy where people are required to undergo meaningful common-sense background checks before purchasing firearms, where all states are permitted to implement gun buy-back programs, where talking openly about gun and gang culture is part of every school’s curriculum.

Here’s an idea:

If we can’t yet change gun control policies, then let’s at least allow, support, and train teachers to raise questions about American gun culture in their classrooms. Let’s at least encourage students to think deeply and talk honestly and openly about what they see on the news and what they witness on their journeys home from school. Let’s at least give students time and space to reflect on the sounds of gunshots that they hear in their neighborhoods at nighttime—and in broad daylight. Rather than armed guards, let’s employ more school counselors.

In the struggle against gun violence, every person across the United States is already in possession of a powerful, sacred, American weapon: the freedom of expression.

I have a feeling that solutions to gun violence won’t come from Congress, or from lectures behind podiums, or from suited politicians in closed rooms with gun lobbyists taking aim at their political careers.

I have a feeling that, given the opportunity, it will be a classroom of high school students in Chicago or Aurora or Newtown that comes up with some tangible ways of reducing gun violence and gun deaths across the United States. I’m close to giving up on our adults and so-called leaders. On the issue of gun violence, it’s time to let our youth speak.

GAYS, GYPSIES & GENOCIDE

“How did you get into Holocaust education?” is a common question and I tend to answer differently depending on who’s asking and what’s on my mind.

Why I Do What I Do: Reason #3

Exactly 69 years ago, Nazi guards at Auschwitz murdered in one night almost all Birkenau prisoners categorized as “Gypsies.”

Three months earlier, when Auschwitz guards surrounded and sealed off the Birkenau Zigeunerlager (Gypsy camp), the prisoners armed themselves with shovels and iron pipes and refused to leave their barracks. In response, over several weeks, Auschwitz administrators transferred Roma and Sinti prisoners capable of work to other camps. Just under 3,000 people—mostly children, the elderly, and the sick—remained.

On the night of August 2nd 1944, Birkenau guards marched with their guns into the Gypsy camp and forced the women, men, and children toward and into the gas chambers.

Until a few years ago, I didn’t know that the Nazis had systematically sterilized, ghettoized, and murdered people of Roma and Sinti descent. Just as the Jewish community refers to the Nazi genocide as the Shoah—catastrophe—, the Roma community uses the Romani term Porajmos—devouring. The Nazi regime and its collaborators murdered approximately 25% of the one million Roma and Sinti living in Europe.

Yet the Roma and Sinti were not recognized as victims of Nazism until 1979.

The Nazi genocide of European Jewry echoed through familial and community memories into my 1980s childhood. The Holocaust films we watched in Jewish youth clubs, the Jewish Holocaust survivors we listened to at school, and the hushed conversations we overheard at home ensured that our Jewish identities would be molded by a Jewish responsibility to remember our dead. The dead Sinti and Roma were never mentioned.

It wasn’t until 2005 that I started to notice.

I’d just moved from London to Chicago. I was getting used to the larger food portions and the divisive politics. And I started to become involved in the gay and trans rights movement. I came across a news article that would change the way I think about Holocaust history: In January 2005, world leaders gathered at Auschwitz-Birkenau to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the camp. But Polish authorities had prevented representatives of the gay community from attending.

I asked one of my professors if, instead of sitting an upcoming exam, I could research and write a paper on Holocaust memory, focusing on how and why the narratives of homosexual victims of Nazism had been pushed to the margins of genocide commemoration.

I knew a fair amount about the Jewish Holocaust narrative, but I felt embarrassed, as a politically engaged gay guy, that I knew so little about the Nazis’ persecution of homosexuals. I began to explore books and articles. I didn’t know about the origins of the pink triangle. Or the German anti-homosexuality law Paragraph 175. Or that the Nazis considered lesbians non-threatening—a euphemism, perhaps, for “easy to rape.” I learned about the Nazis’ forced castration and arbitrary torture of homosexual prisoners. In some concentration camps, concerned about masturbation, the Nazis forced homosexual prisoners to sleep with their arms outside of their blankets, even in the dead of winter.

My work led me to ask questions about collective memory and silenced histories.

I learned that, after liberation in 1945, British and American lawyers recommended that homosexual prisoners of the Nazi camps be re-incarcerated. Homosexual survivors were denied reparations. Paragraph 175 remained on Germany’s books for decades. And in the 1990s, Ultra-Orthodox rabbis and conservative Christian clergy protested against any inclusion or mention of homosexual victims in U.S. Holocaust museums. Homosexuals persecuted during the war were not considered victims of Nazism—and did not qualify for reparations—until 2002.

Marginalized victimhood became the focus of my doctoral research. And my work broadened. Surely, I began to argue, if a goal of Holocaust education is to identify warning signs of future atrocities, then students should learn about the relationships between different forms of Nazi prejudice, policy, and persecution. This approach is especially vital in the face of continued government-led oppression of Roma, LGBT, and other minority communities around the world.

We can’t understand—not fully—any one of these victim group narratives without the others. The Nazis conducted experiments with gas as a method of murder on people with disabilities before building the gas chambers and ovens that consumed the Jews, Sinti, and Roma. While the Nazis tried to find a “cure” for homosexuality, they considered people of Jewish or Gypsy or African descent as “incurable.” If we omit the non-Jewish victims of Nazism from our collective Holocaust memory, then we lose something critical to our understanding of the Nazis’ full intentions.

I understand why Simon Wiesenthal was frustrated with the insistence of some prominent historians and scholars that definitions of “The Holocaust” refer to only Jewish victims. Definitions matter. Definitions determine what and who makes it into history textbooks and exhibitions and remembrance ceremonies.

I now focus my work on helping educators find ways to include—meaningfully and appropriately—all of the Nazis’ victims within Holocaust commemoration and education. After all, if the Nazis made room for all of these categories of people in their concentration camps, if they made room for them in the same mass-graves, then we have a responsibility to make room for all of the dead in our classrooms, museums, and memorials.


What I Do What I Do: Reason #1

What I Do What I Do: Reason #2

A PLAYGROUND AT BIRKENAU

“How did you get into Holocaust education?” is a common question and I tend to answer differently depending on who’s asking and what’s on my mind.

Why I Do What I Do: Reason #2

As our group walked through Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau, one thing we saw disturbed us over and over again: Tourists with children.

When I was eight years old, I saw something I shouldn’t have seen. We were at the home of my parents’ friends. With the adults in the kitchen, I was in the TV room upstairs with the older kids. Flicking through the channels, our eyes became fixed on the screen: A teenage boy watched naked women and children walk toward the gas chambers of a Nazi camp. He couldn’t look away. In another scene, men who had tried to escape the camp were about to be executed when the Nazi officer in charge explained the full punishment: each condemned man was ordered to choose an additional prisoner to be shot. The hundreds of other prisoners—women and men—were forced to watch the mass execution. If any were to turn their heads or close their eyes, they would also be killed.

This was the made-for-TV film “Escape From Sobibor,” based on real events. I imagined myself in the shoes of the Nazis’ victims and, for years, those violent and confusing scenes gave me nightmares. I can still remember myself sitting on the carpet, looking up at the screen, finding it impossible to look away and stunned into silence. I was too young.

When it comes to Holocaust education, how young is too young? Should Holocaust museums and Holocaust sites set minimum age requirements for visitors? The Imperial War Museum in London sets age requirements for entry to its Holocaust history and crimes against humanity exhibitions. Holocaust museums in the U.S. leave the decision to parents. There was a time, our guide told us, when children under 14 year olds were not allowed on the site of Auschwitz. But that ban was lifted.

Over our three days at Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau last week, we watched toddlers playing—and sometimes throwing tantrums—inside the preserved barracks and prison building of Auschwitz. Seven and eight year olds walked by the ruins of the gas chambers of Birkenau. And they stared at the exhibits of human hair and piles of shoes and explicit photographs of emaciated prisoners and listened through their headphones to the Auschwitz State Museum tour guides who described the gruesome details of mass-murder and Nazi experiments.

As we watched these children and their parents tour Auschwitz, I became more and more troubled. What were the parents’ justifications for bringing their children to these sites of atrocity? Weren’t they concerned about traumatizing them?

Or do the lessons about prejudice and extremism outweigh the emotional risks? How should parents explain this history to their children? At what age are children able—cognitively and emotionally—to comprehend the Nazis’ intentions and actions?

In 1943, the Nazis built a playground in Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was placed in the “Gypsy camp” and it included a sandbox, swings, and a carousel. Unlike most Jewish children who arrived at Auschwitz, children of Roma or Sinti descent were not gassed on arrival. Instead, they were allowed to remain with their families and many were used in Nazi experiments before the “Gypsy camp” was liquidated in August 1944.

Throughout the Nazi era, children witnessed extreme violence. Jewish children smuggled food into the Nazi ghettos. They kept diaries and created art. Jewish parents saved the lives of their children by sending them on the Kindertransports to Great Britain. Meanwhile, German “Aryan” children were indoctrinated into Nazi ideology. The Germans kidnapped Polish children who looked “Aryan” and raised them as Germans. Jewish children, along with the elderly, were often the first to be murdered in the Nazi camps. The experiences of children are woven into the fabric of Holocaust history. But that does not make Holocaust history a child-friendly topic.

One of the reasons I do what I do is out of concern for young learners who, despite the good intentions of teachers and parents, are often exposed to violent Holocaust content too early or in problematic ways.

There’s no perfect solution. Because of the nature of Holocaust and genocide education, we can’t avoid the possibility of traumatizing young learners. But we can minimize the risks. Before choosing to expose learners to violent images—in photographs and on film—teachers, youth educators, museum designers, and parents need to tread carefully:

1. INTRODUCTIONS: When we first introduce children to Holocaust history, we do not need to show them images of starved Jewish children in Nazi ghettos or open mass graves. Violent images can overwhelm and stifle critical thinking. We can teach about Holocaust history through words—spoken or on the page. That way, each learner has a chance to move through content at her or his own emotional pace.

2. PREPARATION: When learners are ready to view violent images, we have to prepare them properly. Although Holocaust history is shocking, we don’t want to shock young people into silence. Before sharing violent images—or before a trip to a museum or historical site—we need to ask learners: What do you expect to see? Then, if their expectations are off, we need to tell them what they will see. That way, we minimize the shock and set the stage for conversation and reflection, later on. (To be clear, we should not tell them how they will feel, because everyone responds differently.)

3. VIEWING: When showing violent images to young people we must provide context. We have to go beyond the image. We can ask learners: Who took the photograph or film, and why? What might have been happening beyond the frame? What might have happened before the photograph or film was taken? What might have happened afterwards? How did the photograph or film survive the war? What evidence does each photograph and film provide?

4. REFLECTING: After viewing violent images, we have to help learners reflect on what they saw. We can ask learners: Did anything surprise you? Did you find it easy or difficult to look at the image, and why? How do the images add to—or even contradict—what you already knew about Holocaust history? What new questions about the Holocaust and genocide do you now have?

My hunch is that the children we saw walking through the Auschwitz sites weren’t prepared or supported in these ways. I’m worried that, when those young and older children look away from the piles of hair and photographs of mass graves, they’ll keep their thoughts and questions to themselves, unable to process and learn from what they saw.


Why I Do What I Do: Reason #1

THE H WORD

As our three weeks in Poland come to an end, I've been thinking about why I do what I do. “How did you get into Holocaust education?” is a common question and I tend to answer differently depending on who’s asking and what’s on my mind.

Why I Do What I Do: Reason #1

Nine summers ago, I had just finished putting together a human rights youth program. But, just before its launch, I was told to remove all references to the Holocaust.

In 2004, as a youth worker in inner-city London, I traveled with my colleagues to Cape Town to plan an anti-racism youth exchange program for British and South African teenagers.

We recruited around 30 young people, we facilitated human rights training in both countries, and we prepared them for a summer of travel. First, the teens from South Africa would fly to London for two weeks to meet the Brits. Later in the summer, the Brits would fly to Cape Town and its surrounding townships. Working with the London teens, I was responsible for putting together the itinerary for the UK-based part of the program. We planned trips for the South African teens to various London neighborhoods, focusing on racism in the UK, immigration, homophobia, sexism, Islamophobia, and social inequality.

I decided to start the two weeks of learning by focusing on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ratified by the United Nations in 1948. I was especially excited that I had arranged for the teenagers to meet with a Jewish Holocaust survivor who had lived in South Africa before settling in the UK.

But when I presented the schedule to the program funders, I was ordered to remove two elements from the itinerary. First, I was not allowed to focus on the gap between rich and poor (which is another story!). Second, I had to remove all references to the Holocaust and Nazi antisemitism, including canceling our meeting with the Holocaust survivor. I was stunned and it became very clear that the person overseeing the project would not allow the program to go ahead if references to the Holocaust remained in the schedule. I argued back. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the international community had the guts and the will to advance major human rights and anti-genocide laws. Beginning a human rights education program by learning about Nazi genocide and its implications seemed, to me, entirely appropriate. But I was overruled. The Holocaust content had to go. The Holocaust survivor had to be cancelled. Disgusted by the decision, I apologized to our program partners for the last-minute changes. Then I quit the program in protest.

I still don’t fully understand what happened. I was young. I didn’t ask the questions I would know to ask today. I didn’t understand the politics. I’m still not sure if quitting the program was the best decision.

A year later, I found myself in graduate school, training as a learning scientist. As I explored various specializations, with my experiences in London at the back of my mind, I began to form questions around Holocaust education design. I focused my work on Holocaust museums and collective Holocaust memories. And it was soon time to choose a dissertation path.

I remember the methodology class session. Two faculty instructors and my peers listened to my presentation—a proposal to conduct research on Holocaust pedagogy. When one of the faculty instructors told me—in front of everyone—that focusing on the Holocaust was a terrible idea because “Nobody will care about the Holocaust in 20 years,” I was shocked, angry, and determined to prove the professor wrong.

I walked out of the classroom knowing that despite—and perhaps because of—the professor’s comment, I would dedicate my research, my teaching, and my design work to Holocaust education.

These experiences triggered in me a sense of indignation; at first, my work was a protest against those who would rather we not mention “the H word.” But, over time, as my frustration was replaced by my excitement for my work, these moments became reminders that not everyone understands—or wants to understand—the importance and power of Holocaust history to shed light on ongoing atrocities.

Was I right to quit the youth program in protest, back in 2004? I don’t know. But what I know now is that it’s part of my work to stand up to people who would rather we stay silent.


Why I Do What I Do: Reason #2