Jo Ellen Fair, professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will be giving this year’s Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Lecture at Gustavus. The lecture is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 8 in Wallenberg Auditorium, located in the Alfred Nobel Hall of Science.
The lecture series tries to tie Wallenberg’s life to conspicuous heroism, civil courage in speaking out and acting on one’s convictions. Raoul Wallenberg, one of the least known and greatest of heroes of our century, energetically took up the cause of thousands of Hungarian Jews in imminent danger of mass extermination during the Holocaust.
The Wallenberg Memorial Lectures aim to address the Holocaust or current mass atrocities and human rights violations. They do this by honoring a Swedish peacemaker or by looking at various efforts to encourage peacemaking or manage conflicts (such as national reconciliation commissions, etc.).
Wallenberg saved thousands of Jewish lives by issuing “protecting passports” that instantly made the bearers Swedish citizens. He provided them accommodation, board and medical care in houses the Swedish Embassy bought to use as safe houses.
His most dramatic intervention came at the time when plans were imminent to exterminate the entire remaining Jewish population of Hungary in the Budapest ghetto. Acting only on his own moral authority, Wallenberg sent a note to the German commander, promising to make sure he would be hanged as a war criminal if he went ahead with the destruction of the ghetto. The commander folded, and the lives of 70,000 Jews were saved right then and there, soon thereafter liberated by advancing allied forces. By January 1945, however, Wallenberg was arrested by the Soviet authorities and vanished in the Gulag, now presumed dead.
Jo Ellen Fair’s lecture is entitled, “Not a Simple Story: Mass Media and Mass Violence, the African Case.” It will focus on the U.S. media images of violence/conflict and genocide in various African settings, as well as that of the African media.
“I’ve been working on Africa since graduate school,” Fair said. “Going back and forth for 20 years as a communication specialist, I’ve studied Africa and the media, and it’s interesting to see how we’ve come to look at Africa or how we don’t look at Africa. Even now I’m talking about Africa as if it were one country, but there are 54 countries in the continent.” Fair explains that through the lack of historical engagement that the United States has had with Africa, its long racial history has largely affected how we’ve come to look at Africa. Through those two lenses, we tend to simplify the continent.
At the lecture, Fair plans to speak about the linkage that has been made between the Rwandan genocide and hate media, the harder constraints put on African journalists to “reconcile” a post-conflict society as well as the challenge of post-conflict Liberia to shape its image globally as non-Liberians recycle violent news footage from the war in the making of YouTube music videos.
“Africa is a region in the world that we don’t spend time thinking about,” Fair said. “I want to try to get us to think a little bit harder about the way we’ve been shaped to think and how we think about the world. It’s important for not just students but all Americans to be informed and think critically.” Fair explained how this is the case for every region of the world. News, movies and everything else that happens in the world is simplified, causing us to have particular blinders with Africa. “We need to try to understand the violence,” Fair said. “What are the blinders that keep us from understanding those complexities, and why do we fall back on those complexities?”
Professor of Political Science and Peace Studies Mimi Gerstbauer described some of the atrocities being facilitated by the use of radio and media as a means of genocide. During the Rwandan genocide, hate media contributed to the deliberate and systematic extermination of Tutsis. “There would be a broadcasting of specific names,” Gerstbauer said. “The government itself was a part of the genocide, making statements such as ‘Tutsis are cockroaches.’ As you can see from what just occurred during Coming Out Week, any one of us know that communication is the key to peace as well as good relations.”
Raoul Wallenberg rescued Jews during the Holocaust—one individual choosing to make a difference. Fair plays a part in that, looking at the role she plays in the genocide. “Media can play the biggest role,” Gerstbauer said. “One journalist can be a hero in peace or war. The press is very powerful. The kind of information that comes out and how Africa and the U.S. media portray politics are all controlled by the media.”
As shown from recent events, something as simple as journalism can play the biggest role of all.