8-15-12: A Professor's Past In Rwanda

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UngarMunyakazi-0815.mp3

Leopold Munyakazi of Rwanda had been teaching French at Goucher College just a few months, in the winter of 2008, when a storm erupted around him. Producers for a new NBC news program showed up in the company of a Rwandan prosecutor and told Goucher president Sanford Ungar that Munyakazi was a war criminal. They said he had taken part in and helped organize the mass killings in Rwanda in 1994.

Munyakazi denies it, but he was fired and banned from campus.  Within two months, he had been arrested by federal immigration agents; his request for asylum was rejected a year and a half later; he is appealing that decision.

A few weeks ago, New York Magazine published a reflection by President Ungar about what happened, how it happened, and what it means. It’s titled “Leopold’s Ghost.” 

We hear from both Leopold Munyakazi and Sanford Ungar in this segment.

If you'd like to learn more about how the genocide continues to haunt Rwanda 18 years later, listen to Mary Rose Madden's four-part series that originally aired last spring on WYPR.

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Web Extra: President Ungar explains how European colonists created the distinction between the Hutus and Tutsis

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Web Extra: President Ungar responds to Munyakazi's disagreement with how he was quoted in a 2006 speech

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Web Extra: Munyakazi gives an account of how the Rwandan genocide began