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An appeal in Auschwitz
University of Oregon psychology professor Paul Slovic to speak in Poland, with a call for the international community to justify inaction when genocide is obvious
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| “Our gut feelings will give us the moral intuition that genocide is wrong, but moral reasoning will cause us to lay out reasons to act.” -- Paul Slovic, UO prof; founder of Decision Research |
AUSCHWITZ, Poland -- The international community should take formal steps to justify inaction when conditions of genocide exist anywhere in the world. So says Paul Slovic, a University of Oregon psychology professor, who wants a formal process that requires nations to carefully weigh and publicly justify action or inaction in cases of intentional mass murder. “If they were required to deliberate, I think it would be really difficult for nations not to take action,” he says. “This is something nations aren’t required to do and don’t really do now.”
Slovic is a keynote speaker May 18 at a seminar on the prevention of genocide in Auschwitz, Poland, hosted by the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation.
- For the full story, click here. (You will leave the University of Oregon Web site and be linked to a news release prepared by the National Science Foundation, which has funded much of Slovic's research on how psychic numbing blocks a response to genocide).
- Also available at the NSF Web site is a videotaped interview with Slovic, which was recorded in a UO Media Services studio on campus.
(Also available is a high-resolution mugshot of Slovic)
Slovic will deliver a talk with the same message on campus, at 4 p.m., Friday, May 23. (click here for information)