Slovic's genocide talk to given on campus Friday, May 23

The UO psychology department will host "our very own" Paul Slovic, professor and founder and head of Decision Research in Eugene. The event will be held at 4 p.m. Friday, May 23, in 146 Straub Hall.

Slovic's talk will carry the same message that he delivered Sunday, May 18, in Auschwitz, Poland. His address is titled: "If I look at the mass I will never act: sychic numbing and genocide."

Talk Summary: Most people are caring and will exert great effort to rescue individual victims whose needy plight comes to their attention. These same good people, however, often become numbly indifferent to the plight of individuals who are "one of many" in a much greater problem. Why does this occur?

His talk considers responses at an individual level to the lack of response to genocide by nations, even under the umbrella of a 1948 international agreement on genocide. HIs talk in Poland was a call for nations to  justify their inactions.

In an email on the eve of his address in Poland, Slovic wrote:

"I'm writing this from Auschwitz-Birchenau, Poland, where I have been attending a week-long seminar on genocide. This is the place where more than 1 million Jewish persons were brutally murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. A walk through the vast killing fields is a truly shocking lesson in human brutality."

And he attached a couple of images from Birchenau: At left, the end of the rail tracks that carried hundreds of thousands to the gas chambers, only a stone's throw away. The bodies were cremated and the ashes thrown on the ground.  At right, A tree, about to topple, exposes its roots, displaying the human ashes in which the roots have been growing.