Institute Staff

J. D. Bowers (Ph.D., Indiana University), Institute Director, is an Assistant Professor of History at Northern Illinois University and Director of the Secondary Teacher Certification for History and Social Sciences. His teaching and research interests include religion, genocide and human rights, public history, and social studies curriculum development. Professor Bowers has been awarded many grants including the Woodrow Wilson/Carnegie Foundation for the improvement of history teaching and serves as a historian-in-residence, consultant, and advisor for three different Teaching American History grants serving more than fifty-five schools and nearly 200 teachers; he has also received several distinguished teaching awards.

Roger Smith(PhD., University of California, Berkeley ),Professor of Government Emeritus, College of William and Mary, is one of the country's foremost experts on genocide, is widely-published on this topic. He is known for his seminal article “American Self-Interest and the Response to Genocide,” which appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education in July, 2004. More specifically, he has written about the Armenian genocide and women and genocide. He has served as President of the International Association for Genocide Scholars, chairman of the Zoryan Institute's Academic Board of Directors, and as a council member of the Institute on the Holocaust.