Co-sponsored by European Studies and the African Studies Program.
This program is part of Genocide Awareness Month and intended to support the needs of Wisconsin educators following WI Act 30.
Register for this event here.
The content and pedagogy of secondary genocide education have largely been shaped by research and teaching based in North America and Europe. Typically, this education seeks to prevent future atrocities by examining the causes and consequences of genocide, fostering critical thinking, cultivating collective memory, and promoting civic engagement in the pursuit of a more just and peaceful world. Yet for the Ovaherero and Nama communities of Namibia, Angola, Botswana, and South Africa, descendants of the survivors of the 1904–1907 genocide in German Southwest Africa, a central goal of genocide education is the restitution of ancestral land and the maintenance of traditional cultural practices. This presentation asks: How can genocide education in Southern Africa be reimagined as and for reparative justice for impacted communities? Additionally, how might such efforts, in turn, reshape North American and European genocide education? Join Dr. Dalbo to learn about ongoing collaborative work with researchers and community members across three continents to collect oral histories to develop Ovaherero and Nama genocide curricula grounded in historical truth, local voices, and the pursuit of justice, particularly land return.
George D. Dalbo is Assistant Professor of Education and Youth Studies and Sociology at Beloit College and Research Fellow at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. His teaching and research critically examine comparative genocide and human rights education in middle and secondary classrooms and curricula in the United States and Canada, with particular attention to Indigenous genocide, curricular silences, and the tensions between justice-oriented pedagogy and settler colonial schooling structures. George completed his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on Social Studies Education and a graduate minor in Human Rights at the University of Minnesota. George’s recent works include a co-authored article, “Navigating the Paradox of Repair: Indigenous Genocide and Public Education in Minnesota and Manitoba” (2024; Futures), and the book, Unsettling Narratives: Teaching About Genocide in a Settler Space (2025; Ethics Press). Previously, for nearly two decades, George was a middle and high school social studies teacher in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Vienna, Austria.
Moderator: Heinz Klug is the John and Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School. He is a member of the California Bar (inactive) and is admitted as a Advocate in South Africa. Growing up in Durban, South Africa, he participated in the anti-apartheid struggle, spent 11 years in exile and returned to South Africa in 1990 as a member of the ANC Land Commission and researcher for Zola Skweyiya, chairperson of the ANC Constitutional Committee. He was also a team member on the World Bank mission to South Africa on Land Reform and Rural Restructuring. He has taught at Wisconsin since September 1996.