Robert Melson

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Robert Melson
Education	PhD in Political Science from MIT (1967)

Robert Melson is professor emeritus of political science and a member of the Jewish studies program at Purdue Universityin Indiana. In 2003-2005, he was the President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS). In 2006 and 2007, he was the Cathy Cohen-Lasry Distinguished Professor in the [Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University], Worcester, Massachusetts.

His major area of teaching and research has been ethnic conflict and genocide. His interest in the topic derives from his family's experience in Europe, as well as from his field work in Nigeria in 1964-65, a year before the onset of the Nigerian-Biafran civil war. The story of his and his family's survival during the Holocaust is told in False Papers, (University of Illinois Press, 2000), which was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award for 2001. Among his other books, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust (University of Chicago Press, 1992/6.) He has published (with Howard Wolpe, eds.), Nigeria: Modernization and the Politics of Communalism. ^[1](East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1971.) His articles have been published in the American Political Science Review, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and elsewhere.

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As a survivor of the Holocaust, Melson has reason to feel that the suffering of his people was unique. However, trained in comparative politics, he also finds it important to draw parallels between the Holocaust and other Genocides. "If you're going to have some understanding, you have to compare," he notes. In his book "Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust" (University of Chicago Press, 1992), Robert Melson does exactly that.

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