Barbara Harff: Difference between revisions

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'''Barbara Harff''' (born in Kassel, Germany; Ph.D. Northwestern University, 1981) is Professor of Political Science Emerita at the U.S. Naval Academy in [[Annapolis, Maryland]]. In 2003 and again in 2005 she was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Her research focuses on the causes, risks, and prevention of genocidal violence.<ref>Barbara Harff, "A German-Born Genocide Scholar," in Samuel Totten and Steven L. Jacobs, eds., Pioneers of Genocide Studies, 2002, pp. 97-112 </ref>

Prof. Harff’s dissertation at Northwestern University applied the international legal doctrine of humanitarian intervention to genocide. It was published in 1984 as a monograph on Genocide and Human Rights <ref> Genocide and Human Rights: International Legal and Political Issues (Graduate School of Internaitonal Studies, University of Denver, Mongraph Series in World Affairs, 1984)</ref> Before joining the US Naval Academy faculty in 1989 Prof. Harff held academic positions in the Department of Legal Studies, LaTrobe University, in Melbourne, Australia; the University of Illinois Chicago campus; and Marquette University. She retired from the Naval Academy in 2005.

In the early 1980s Prof. Harff began to develop a dataset on cases of genocide and political mass murder since 1945 to demonstrate that genocidal killings were far more common than widely believed. She identified and profiled 46 instances through 1985 <ref> Barbara Harff and T. R. Gurr, "Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases since 1945," International Studies Quarterly, September 1988, pp. 359-71)</ref> This list provided the basis for systematic comparative analysis by her and others.

From 1995 Prof. Harff served as senior consultant to the White-House initiated State Failure (now Political Instability) Task Force whose data set on state failures included her cases of genocide and politicide. In her work for the Task Force she designed data-based analyses of the preconditions and accelerators of genocidal killings for use by the Clinton and Bush Administrations. Her risk assessment model for genocide and its application to contemporary conflict situations was published in 2003 <ref> “No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955,” American Political Science Review, February 2003, pp. 57-73 </ref>

She also developed an early warning model to identify local, national, and international events that help turn high-risk situations into full-fledged genocidal killings. She applied this model, which identified some 70 categories of actions, to information on events that preceded mass atrocities in Bosnia, Rwandia, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo <ref> Barbara Harff, "Could Humanitarian Crises Have Been Anticipated in Burudni, Rwanda, and Zaire? A Comparative Study of Anticipatory Indicators," in H. R. Alker, T. R. Gurr, and K. Rupesinghe, eds., Journeys Through Conflict: Narratives and Lessons, 2001 </ref>

Other publications include Ethnic Conflict in World Politics <ref> Barbara Hartff and T. R. Gurr, Ethnic Conflict in World Politics, 1994 and 2003 eds. </ref> and Essays in Honor of Helen Fein (2007), coedited with Joyce Apsel and published by the International Association of Genocide Studies. She also has written some sixty articles and chapters on the international and comparative dimensions of massive human rights violations. She has held visiting appointments as PIOOM Fellow at the Center for the Study of Social Conflicts, University of Leiden (1993), and Uppsala University’s Department of Peace and Conflict Research (1996–97).