Ben Kiernan
Encyclopedia
Benedict F. Kiernan is the Whitney Griswold Professor of History, Professor of International and Area Studies and Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University
. He is a prolific writer on the Cambodia
n genocide. Kiernan has also published prize-winning work on the global history of genocide
.
but left before the Khmer Rouge
expelled all foreigners in 1975. Though he initially doubted the scale of genocide
then being perpetrated in Democratic Kampuchea
, he changed his mind in 1978 after beginning a series of interviews with several hundred refugees from Cambodia. He learnt the Khmer language
, carried out extensive research in Cambodia and among refugees abroad, and has since written many critically acclaimed books on the topic.
From 1980 onwards, Kiernan worked with Gregory Stanton
to bring the Khmer Rouge to international justice. He obtained his Ph.D. from Monash University
, Australia
in 1983 under the supervision of David P. Chandler
. He joined the Yale History Department in 1990, and founded the award-winning Cambodian Genocide Program at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies in 1994, and the comparative Genocide Studies Program in 1998. He is the author of over 100 scholarly articles on Southeast Asia
and genocide. Kiernan currently teaches history courses on Southeast Asia, the Vietnam War
and genocides through the ages.
In 1995 a Khmer Rouge court indicted, tried and sentenced Kiernan in-absentia for "prosecuting and terrorizing the Cambodian resistance patriots".
Kiernan is married to acclaimed historian of the American South Glenda Gilmore
His 2007 book, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur
(Yale University Press), received the 2008 gold medal from the U.S. Independent Publishers association for the best work of History published in 2007, and the German Studies Association’s biennial Sybil Halpern Milton Memorial Book Prize for the best book published in 2007 or 2008 dealing with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust in its broadest context, covering the fields of history, political science, and other social sciences, literature, art, and photography.
In June 2009, the book’s German translation, Erde und Blut: Völkermord und Vernichtung von der Antike bis heute, won first place in Germany’s Nonfiction Book of the Month Prize (Die Sachbücher des Monats). Kiernan’s writings have appeared in fourteen languages. His books on Cambodian history include How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, 1930-1975 (first published in 1985), and Genocide and Resistance in Southeast Asia: Documentation, Denial and Justice in Cambodia and East Timor (Transaction, 2007). In 2008, Yale University Press published the third edition of his 1996 book, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979. Kiernan’s anthology Conflict and Change in Cambodia won the Critical Asian Studies Prize for 2002.
While Kiernan has become a fierce critic of Khmer Rouge behavior, Peter Rodman states that "When Hanoi turned publicly against Phnom Penh, it suddenly became respectable for many on the Left to "discover" the murderous qualities of the Khmer Rouge-qualities that had been obvious to unbiased observers for years. Kiernan fits this pattern nicely. His book even displays an eagerness to absolve of genocidal responsibility those members of the Khmer Rouge who defected to Hanoi and were later reinstalled in power in Phnom Penh by the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1978."
In 1994, Kiernan was awarded a $499,000 grant by Congress to help the Cambodian government document the Khmer Rouge's abuses. Stephen J. Morris, at the time a research associate in the department of government at Harvard University cited statements Kiernan had made regarding the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal Morris claimed that Kiernan's earlier opinions made him a poor choice to study Khmer Rouge abuses.Gerard Henderson
, executive director of Australia's Sydney Institute
stated that Kiernan had "barracked for the Khmer Rouge when the Cambodian killing fields were choked with corpses."
That same Yale University
alumni magazine article carried Kiernan's response to Morris:
Twenty-nine Cambodian scholars and specialists publicly sided with Kiernan. From across a political spectrum that included Cambodian genocide survivor Dith Pran
, senior historians including David P. Chandler
, Craig Etcheson, Nayan Chanda
, Michael Vickery and Milton Osborne
signed a petition disassociating themselves from Stephen Morris, and chiding him for invoking the names of other scholars without permission. They wrote: "We have full confidence in Prof. Kiernan's integrity, professional scholarship, and ability to carry out the important work of the Cambodian Genocide Program. He is a first-rate historian and an excellent choice for the State Department grant." Concluding that, "As Cambodia studies is a small field, and we and our students comprise the majority who publish in the field, we are at a loss to imagine which "scholars" Mr. Morris might mean. We are certainly not among them, although Mr. Morris has not been above invoking names without permission. We totally dissociate ourselves from Stephen J. Morris."
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. He is a prolific writer on the Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
n genocide. Kiernan has also published prize-winning work on the global history of genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
.
Biography
In his early twenties, Kiernan visited CambodiaCambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
but left before the Khmer Rouge
Khmer Rouge
The Khmer Rouge literally translated as Red Cambodians was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan...
expelled all foreigners in 1975. Though he initially doubted the scale of genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
then being perpetrated in Democratic Kampuchea
Democratic Kampuchea
The Khmer Rouge period refers to the rule of Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, Khieu Samphan and the Khmer Rouge Communist party over Cambodia, which the Khmer Rouge renamed as Democratic Kampuchea....
, he changed his mind in 1978 after beginning a series of interviews with several hundred refugees from Cambodia. He learnt the Khmer language
Khmer language
Khmer , or Cambodian, is the language of the Khmer people and the official language of Cambodia. It is the second most widely spoken Austroasiatic language , with speakers in the tens of millions. Khmer has been considerably influenced by Sanskrit and Pali, especially in the royal and religious...
, carried out extensive research in Cambodia and among refugees abroad, and has since written many critically acclaimed books on the topic.
From 1980 onwards, Kiernan worked with Gregory Stanton
Gregory Stanton
Gregory H. Stanton is the founder and president of Genocide Watch, the founder and director of the Cambodian Genocide Project, and the founder and Chair of the International Campaign to End Genocide...
to bring the Khmer Rouge to international justice. He obtained his Ph.D. from Monash University
Monash University
Monash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Victoria. It was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. Monash is a member of Australia's Group of Eight and the ASAIHL....
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
in 1983 under the supervision of David P. Chandler
David P. Chandler
David P. Chandler is an American historian and academic who is regarded as one of the foremost western scholars of Cambodia's modern history. Chandler currently resides in Australia, where he is an emeritus professor at Monash University as well as an adjunct professor of Asian Studies at...
. He joined the Yale History Department in 1990, and founded the award-winning Cambodian Genocide Program at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies in 1994, and the comparative Genocide Studies Program in 1998. He is the author of over 100 scholarly articles on Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...
and genocide. Kiernan currently teaches history courses on Southeast Asia, the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
and genocides through the ages.
In 1995 a Khmer Rouge court indicted, tried and sentenced Kiernan in-absentia for "prosecuting and terrorizing the Cambodian resistance patriots".
Kiernan is married to acclaimed historian of the American South Glenda Gilmore
Glenda Gilmore
Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore is an award-winning historian of the American South at Yale University.-Life:An eighth-generation North Carolinian, Gilmore received her B.A. in Psychology from Wake Forest University...
Select Publications and Awards
In an article in the Walrus Magazine, Kiernan and Taylor Owen wrote that recent evidence reveals that Cambodia was bombed by the U.S. far more heavily than previously believed. They conclude that "the impact of this bombing, the subject of much debate for the past three decades, is now clearer than ever. Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began, setting in motion the expansion of the Vietnam War deeper into Cambodia, a coup d'état in 1970, the rapid rise of the Khmer Rouge, and ultimately the Cambodian genocide."His 2007 book, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur
Blood and Soil (book)
Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur is a 2007 book by Ben Kiernan, who for thirty years has studied genocide and crimes against humanity...
(Yale University Press), received the 2008 gold medal from the U.S. Independent Publishers association for the best work of History published in 2007, and the German Studies Association’s biennial Sybil Halpern Milton Memorial Book Prize for the best book published in 2007 or 2008 dealing with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust in its broadest context, covering the fields of history, political science, and other social sciences, literature, art, and photography.
In June 2009, the book’s German translation, Erde und Blut: Völkermord und Vernichtung von der Antike bis heute, won first place in Germany’s Nonfiction Book of the Month Prize (Die Sachbücher des Monats). Kiernan’s writings have appeared in fourteen languages. His books on Cambodian history include How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, 1930-1975 (first published in 1985), and Genocide and Resistance in Southeast Asia: Documentation, Denial and Justice in Cambodia and East Timor (Transaction, 2007). In 2008, Yale University Press published the third edition of his 1996 book, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979. Kiernan’s anthology Conflict and Change in Cambodia won the Critical Asian Studies Prize for 2002.
Criticism and Defense of Kiernan's Scholarship
Kiernan's work before 1978, especially his work with the publication News from Kampuchea, has been criticized as being pro-Khmer Rouge.While Kiernan has become a fierce critic of Khmer Rouge behavior, Peter Rodman states that "When Hanoi turned publicly against Phnom Penh, it suddenly became respectable for many on the Left to "discover" the murderous qualities of the Khmer Rouge-qualities that had been obvious to unbiased observers for years. Kiernan fits this pattern nicely. His book even displays an eagerness to absolve of genocidal responsibility those members of the Khmer Rouge who defected to Hanoi and were later reinstalled in power in Phnom Penh by the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1978."
In 1994, Kiernan was awarded a $499,000 grant by Congress to help the Cambodian government document the Khmer Rouge's abuses. Stephen J. Morris, at the time a research associate in the department of government at Harvard University cited statements Kiernan had made regarding the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal Morris claimed that Kiernan's earlier opinions made him a poor choice to study Khmer Rouge abuses.Gerard Henderson
Gerard Henderson
Gerard Henderson is a conservative Australian newspaper columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.. He is also Executive Director of the Sydney Institute, a privately funded current affairs forum. His wife Anne Henderson is Deputy Director.-Education:Henderson attended the Jesuit Xavier College in...
, executive director of Australia's Sydney Institute
Sydney Institute
The Sydney Institute, founded in 1989, is a privately funded, conservative, Australian current affairs forum. The Sydney Institute took over the resources of the Sydney Institute of Public Affairs which ceased activity in the late 1980s...
stated that Kiernan had "barracked for the Khmer Rouge when the Cambodian killing fields were choked with corpses."
That same Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
alumni magazine article carried Kiernan's response to Morris:
Kiernan fired back publicly at Morris, questioning his credentials as a Southeast Asian scholar and saying in the Wall Street Journal that Morris had based his claims on "selective quotes" from Kiernan's early writings, while ignoring his 18 years of research exposing the atrocities of Pol Pot's regime. "It struck me as a hall of mirrors," Kiernan says. "On the one hand I was accused of being a Khmer Rouge sympathizer, while on the other the Khmer Rouge were sentencing me as an arch war criminal."
Kiernan says he has long acknowledged, publicly and in print, "that there were things I got wrong about the Khmer Rouge." He says that "errors of interpretation" led him to believe initially that the Cambodian Communists might have been a positive force in an essentially feudal country. He adds that his early commentaries appeared at a time when random acts of "post-war revenge" were common, and not always easy to distinguish from what became an orchestrated plan of extermination.
Twenty-nine Cambodian scholars and specialists publicly sided with Kiernan. From across a political spectrum that included Cambodian genocide survivor Dith Pran
Dith Pran
Dith Pran was a Cambodian photojournalist best known as a refugee and survivor of the Cambodian Genocide. He was the subject of the Academy Award-winning film The Killing Fields . He was portrayed in the movie by first-time actor Haing S. Ngor , who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor...
, senior historians including David P. Chandler
David P. Chandler
David P. Chandler is an American historian and academic who is regarded as one of the foremost western scholars of Cambodia's modern history. Chandler currently resides in Australia, where he is an emeritus professor at Monash University as well as an adjunct professor of Asian Studies at...
, Craig Etcheson, Nayan Chanda
Nayan Chanda
Nayan Chanda is a former correspondent and editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review and co-author of numerous books on Asian politics, security and foreign policy issues. He is best known for his seminal book, Brother Enemy: The War after the War...
, Michael Vickery and Milton Osborne
Milton Osborne
Milton Osborne is an Australian historian, author, and consultant specializing in Southeast Asia.He attended North Sydney Boys High School, graduated from the University of Sydney and received a Ph.D. from Cornell University. Osborne held academic positions in Australia, the United Kingdom, the...
signed a petition disassociating themselves from Stephen Morris, and chiding him for invoking the names of other scholars without permission. They wrote: "We have full confidence in Prof. Kiernan's integrity, professional scholarship, and ability to carry out the important work of the Cambodian Genocide Program. He is a first-rate historian and an excellent choice for the State Department grant." Concluding that, "As Cambodia studies is a small field, and we and our students comprise the majority who publish in the field, we are at a loss to imagine which "scholars" Mr. Morris might mean. We are certainly not among them, although Mr. Morris has not been above invoking names without permission. We totally dissociate ourselves from Stephen J. Morris."