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Sentinel Project team members Collin Sullivan, Christopher Tuckwood and Taneem Talukdar had the opportunity to meet with Congressman Tim Walz, the U.S. Representative for Minnesota’s 1st congressional district, on Friday.

In 1993, Congressman Walz was a teacher at Alliance High School in Alliance, Nebraska. That year he gave his geography class an unusual project – to research and identify the socio-economic preconditions of communities that have experienced genocides. Based on their findings, the class predicted the Rwandan genocide one year before it happened (New York Times article).

Congressman Walz expressed an interest in the Sentinel Project’s work and emphasized the need to teach genocide in schools not as historical anomalies but as a systemic and therefore preventable issue. Over the coming weeks we will be exploring how we can best work with the Congressman’s office and we look forward to speaking with him again in the near future.