2 LT Miranda Bass, USMA ‘18

The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies totally transformed my intellectual experience as a cadet at West Point. I first came in contact with the Center as a yearling, on a trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I attended another Center event, the Joint Service Academy Mass Atrocity Prevention Symposium, also at the Holocaust Museum, with other cadets and midshipmen from all the service academies. I learned during this conference for the first time about what genocide and mass atrocity studies were and the mission of studying with the goal of preventing incidences of mass atrocity. I was inspired during this symposium to focus on genocide and mass atrocity studies in my academic career as an international relations major and elected to take one of the Center’s foundational courses, Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing (XH 415). In this interdisciplinary class taught by Dr. David Frey, I studied the theoretical underpinnings of the field and began analyzing case studies of mass atrocity. I was so compelled by the course that I ultimately decided to write my senior thesis in the Department of Social Sciences on a topic in genocide and mass atrocity studies. I analyzed the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s framework to predict incidences of atrocity with the case of the Russian anti-Jewish pogroms in 1881-2. The thesis lasted the entirety of my final year at West Point and was one of the most intellectually fulfilling projects I completed during my academic career. The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies sparked my interest in genocide and atrocity studies and inspired me to focus the culmination of my undergraduate career this field. Genocide and mass atrocity studies is such a dynamic and important field because of its relative youth and its real impact on life and death all over the world. As an officer in military intelligence, my education in this field will undoubtedly be valuable in analyzing armed conflict on a large or small scale anywhere in the world the Army sends me.