Alexandra [Ola] Morehead, Harvard University ’17

After being graduated from Harvard with a degree in the History of Science and returning to her Newburgh home, Ola Morehead contacted the CHGS about the possibility of serving as an intern during the summer of 2017.  Having studied the history and memory of genocide in Eastern Europe during the post war era, focusing specifically on Poland’s experience and memorialization of wartime crimes and violence, it quickly became apparent that she would be well-suited to work on a situation assessment of Ukraine.  Fluent in Polish and beginning studies in Ukrainian and Russian, she is approximately a month away from completing the study of Ukraine, which Dr. Frey arranged with the help of colleagues serving in European Command (EUCOM).  The study concentrates on human rights violations related to the on-going conflict—particularly the risk of government violence against and mass killing of its own citizens. Once completed and revised, this situation assessment could serve, like the aforementioned Nigeria and South Sudan situation assessments, as the basis for the culminating Table Top Exercise in a future iteration of Dr. Frey’s XH 415 “Genocide and Mass Killing” class.

During the fall of 2017, Ms. Morehead regularly sat in on that class.  She told the cadets “we don’t have anything like this at Harvard.  I really wish we did.”  Among the highlights, she felt, was the opportunity to meet and hear the story of Ms. Eugenie Mukeshimana, a Rwandan Genocide survivor who courageously shared her unimaginable story of surviving in hiding while pregnant.  Alexandra intends to enter a PhD program in Eastern European History with the goal of becoming a scholar of genocide.