Rev. Dr. Paul Haidostian

Khatchig Mouradian

The Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies invites you to a conversation between Rev. Dr. Paul Haidostian, President of Haigazian University in Beirut, Lebanon, and Khatchig Mouradian, Coordinator of the Armenian Genocide Program at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University, on “The Scourge of Genocide:  A Century of Angst in the Middle East.” The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place at Ramapo College of New Jersey (Trustees Pavilion) on February 10 at 7:30 p.m.

The discussion will explore how in the Middle East mass violence since the Armenian Genocide of 1915 has created a culture of anxiety among the region’s Christian communities. While the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) represents the most immediate danger, Middle Eastern Christians today generally see themselves in an existential struggle characterized by almost routine attempts to eliminate their presence in the region. They have seen the formerly robust Christian communities of Iraq, which until the second Iraq war numbered about one million, dwindle to less than 250,000 in the face of intimidations, bombings and kidnappings.