UNCA to Host Talk on the Rebuilding of Rwanda

UNC Asheville will host "Rwanda Builds Its Future on a Fractured Past," a talk by lawyer and anthropologist Paul J. Magnarella, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 11, in UNCA's Laurel Forum, 139 Karpen Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

Magnarella's talk highlights the justice being sought in the wake of Rwanda's genocide as instigators of the 1994 massacre continue to be convicted. An estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed in a period of 100 days after the Rwandan president, Juvenal Habyarimana, was shot down in his plane on April 6, 1994.

Magnarella, who is currently a professor of anthropology, law and African Studies at the University of Florida, will fill his new position as professor of peace studies at Warren Wilson College this fall. Magnarella has also taught at Harvard University. He served as an expert on mission with the U.N. Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and carried out legal research for the U.N. Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Magnarella's book, "Justice in Africa: Rwanda's Genocide, Its National Courts and the U.N. Criminal Tribunal," won the Association of the Third World Studies Book of the Year Award in 2000.

The talk is sponsored by UNCA's Africana Studies and the Belk Professorship in the Humanities.

For more information, call John Wood, UNCA Interim Director of Africana Studies, at 828/251-6977.

Media Contacts:

• Dr. John Wood, Interim Director of Africana Studies, 828/251-6977
• Jill Yarnall, UNCA Public Information Assistant Director, 828/251-6526