The Middlebury Campus

Issue date: 2/14/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Courtesy [Click to enlarge]

Rwandan Hutu Paul Rusesabagina, whose heroism during the genocide that killed 800,000 Tutsis and their sympathizers was captured in the 2004 film "Hotel Rwanda," will address Middlebury students, faculty and staff in Mead Chapel on Saturday, March 3 at 7 p.m. Rusesabagina's speech will mark the inaugural event of the campus-wide convocation series proposed in the College's Strategic Plan to unite the community through intellectual discourse.

The series will "introduce a broad theme, to which conversation will return in different formats." In an interview on Wednesday, January 31, Dean of the College Tim Spears indicated that this first series, revolving around Rusesabagina's presentation, will center on the theme of "genocide, diaspora and resettlement" and will include several weeks of follow-up, "ancillary events, ones that connect thematically to the primary event, such as panels and small group discussions."

Rusesabagina famously saved more than a thousand lives and risked his own during the 100 days of genocide in Rwanda by hiding endangered individuals in the city of Kigali's Mille Collines Hotel, which he had previously managed. He has since founded the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation (HRRF) in 2005 to support and care for children orphaned by, and women abused during the genocide.

"Mr. Rusesabagina, a great human being and humble individual, is a living testimony of human goodness in a situation of human-induced horror," wrote Assistant Professor of Political Science Nadia Horning in an e-mail. "As a privileged member of mid-1990s Rwandan society, he used the means he had at his disposal, i.e., a hotel property, connections with a Western clientele - including UN commanders and access to the outside business world in order to bring the world's attention to the genocide that was taking place in front of his eyes."

"His and others' cries for help fell onto deaf ears," wrote Horning, "in the end, he was made to realize that Rwanda was of no strategic interest to the West."

Despite the fact that "ample reporting on this crime against humanity was present, the world and its leaders condemned the horrors while sitting on their hands," the HRRF website explains.

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