Dr. Bertha Alvarez Manninen, Ph.D., professor of Philosophy at Arizona State University West Valley, will bring a handful of events to the campus from March 31 to April 4 to coincide with the 2025 Genocide Awareness Week.

“The ASU campus at Tempe has commemorated Genocide Awareness Week for the last few years,” Manninen said. “This year I took it upon myself to bring some of those events to our side of the city.

“A lot of this was inspired by my child. She was learning about the Holocaust in eighth grade, and made a comment that she’s glad these types of things don’t happen anymore. It saddened me to tell her that that’s unfortunately not true. So, I wanted this event as a form of education, and we’d like to bring in as many people from the community as possible.”

Events include:

March 31, 5-7 p.m., CLCC Lect. 110 – Film screening of “Red Hand,” and panel discussion on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). Includes a short film by ASU graduate, Octavia Endischee, who wrote and directed the film about MMIW as her final film degree project. She will be part of the three panelists for the event, all of whom have family members killed and disappear as a result of these occurrences.

April 1, 3-5 p.m., CLCC 246 – Panelist of genocide survivors (all local): Marge Rich, Holocaust; Dositha Kamugisha, Rwanda; Rafi Yusuf Zaw Win, Rohingya; Brianslav Vujic, Bosnia. Sara Adams, the Women’s Empowerment Coordinator at Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest (www.lss-sw.org), will moderate.  The event will be followed by a candlelight vigil in honor of genocide victims.

April 3, 3-5 p.m., SANDS 101 – Keynote address by Dr. David Livingstone Smith, a philosophy professor who has written several books and has had several media appearances about the psychology, history and philosophy of dehumanization.

Arizona State University West Valley campus is located at 13591 N. 47th Ave., Phoenix. For a campus map or other information, visit https://campus.asu.edu/west-valley. Direct questions about the event to Manninen at bertha.manninen@asu.edu.

Author

Hello, North Central neighbor — thank you for visiting!

Sign up to receive our digital issue in your inbox each month.

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.