Jerry Fowler, a director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, spoke Sunday at the University of Oregon as one of five keynote lecturers at the Witnessing Genocide Symposium. The symposium, inspired by a 1996 conference on ethics and the Holocaust, was opened on Saturday with a speech by Samantha Power.

Fowler, who is the Podlich Distinguished Visitor at Claremont McKenna College and Staff Director of the Committee on Conscience at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, asked attendees if bearing witness to genocide can have any practical effects toward eliminating mass violence.

He began by talking about how the willingness of political leaders to talk about contemporary genocide has evolved over recent years.

“Just a couple of weeks ago the President of the United States, George Bush, gave his first speech devoted to Darfur,” Fowler said, adding that he had talked about it before but never focused on it.

Darfur is a region in western Sudan where more than 2 million people have been driven from their homes and remain at risk as a result of ethnic violence, Fowler said.

He later referred to former President Bill Clinton, saying, “It’s not so long ago that we had a President of the United States who, personally and throughout his administration, assiduously avoided even using the term ‘genocide’ for fear that he would be called upon to do something.”