Luce Foundation Funds Cambodian Genocide Project

The Henry Luce Foundation has awarded a two-year grant of $250,000 to the Cambodian Genocide Program, CGP, at Yale University to help fund the program’s continuing research.

The goal of the program is to document mass killings that took place during the Khmer Rouge regime headed by Pol Pot between 1975 and 1979, when as many as 1.7 million people lost their lives. The CGP’s projects include databases of biographic, photographic, bibliographic and geographic information; legal training for Cambodian governmental officials and human rights workers; new research on the social history of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime; support for a documentation center in Phnom Penh; and recovery of Khmer Rouge documents from various archives. Other planned projects include forensic archaeology at mass grave sites, and additional documentation training for Cambodian staffers. The databases are expected to be on the Internet in the near future, making them accessible to scholars around the world.

Cosponsored by the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, the Council on Southeast Asia Studies, and the Yale Law School’s Schell Center for International Human Rights, the CGP is headed by Ben Kiernan, associate professor of history. Mr. Kiernan is author of “The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79”, Yale University Press, 1996. Craig Etcheson is program manager. The CGP was set up in 1995 with funding from the U.S. State Department.

The Henry Luce Foundation was established in 1936 by the late Henry R. Luce, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Time, Inc. With assets of more than $500 million, the foundation supports programs focusing on higher education, Asia, American art, theology, public affairs, and women in science.