Tom A. Bernstein Genocide Prevention Fellowship

The mission of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide is to ensure that the United States government, governments around the world, and multilateral organizations institutionalize structures, tools, and policies to effectively prevent and respond to genocide and mass atrocities.

Ensuring a better future requires innovative strategies and new applied research in understanding the causes of genocide and how to address them. The Simon-Skjodt Center’s Bernstein Genocide Prevention Fellowship will serve as an incubator for new ideas for seasoned leaders in the field of genocide prevention. The Fellowship’s aim is to bridge the gaps among academics, government officials, and NGOs who have a distinguished track record of working on the frontlines of preventing and responding to these crimes.

This Fellowship will provide a valuable contribution to the Simon-Skjodt Center’s Fellowship Program by advancing our understanding of genocide, studying lessons learned from past cases on how to prevent it, and providing critical new insights and recommendations on how to improve the global capacity to respond. Projects undertaken by other Simon-Skjodt Center Fellows have enhanced the capacity to identify where genocide threatens and to interrupt the processes that can lead to it. Our Fellows have also contributed to efforts to educate the public and policymakers about ongoing cases of concern and potential responses. Fellows have helped to organize conferences, symposia, and other events where they have presented their work to policymakers, experts, activists, and interested members of the public. The Bernstein Fellowship will build upon this track record in advancing the field of, and policy discussion around, atrocity prevention.

We are recruiting Fellows who are established leaders in their professions and who can contribute new insights and thinking based upon a track record of professional success. Fellows will come from a variety of backgrounds—such as government service (diplomacy, military, and intelligence), academia, civil society, law, and journalism—and are residential and non-residential.

For periods ranging from four months to a year, Fellows will work on projects that draw from a variety of fields including political science, law, geography, history, humanitarian affairs and human rights, international relations, sociology, psychology, journalism, and applied sciences.

As part of their research, Fellows may travel domestically or internationally to gather information for their projects. Each project culminates in one or more finished products, such as a book or article for publication, a major policy paper, a report on or demonstration of a technological application, a handbook or manual for practitioners, a website resource, a grant-ready proposal for a program or field project, a major interdisciplinary conference resulting in a published collection of papers, or other multimedia or exhibition quality displays. In addition to working on their projects, the Bernstein Genocide Prevention Fellows will help to organize seminars, workshops, conferences, or other opportunities to present their findings. The Simon-Skjodt Center disseminates the results of individual Fellows’ work to its contacts in the policy and practitioner communities who are most likely to find applications for it.

No other institution offers a Fellowship program that focuses exclusively on fostering new work with practical applications for preventing genocide. Over time, the program will significantly expand and diversify the field of genocide prevention and disseminate to audiences throughout the world the essential concepts and tools of genocide prevention.