It was announced quietly on Nov. 1, with a small, two-paragraph notice replacing the web page for Concordia University’s Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS), along with an unrelated stock photo of the campus.
“Concordia University has concluded the operations of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) due to budgetary constraints,” read the notice. “We extend our sincere gratitude to all faculty, staff, students and partners who dedicated themselves to advancing MIGS’ mission over the years.”
That was all left of the immediate branding of the esteemed MIGS, founded by Frank Chalk and the late Kurt Jonassohn in 1986, which had become a widely renowned think-tank working to inform public policy at the intersection of human rights, conflict prevention and emerging technologies.
The institute had achieved global recognition for its work with policymakers, academics, UN officials, students, civil society organizations and journalists, including the much-lauded Will to Intervene Project which sought to prevent mass atrocities through education and policy advocacy.
Reaction was swift.
Irwin Cotler, Canada’s former attorney-general, and founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, told The CJN he “regrets the untimely closing of MIGS, which has played such an important role in the protection of human rights and the combatting of mass atrocity.
“The Wallenberg Centre and myself personally have had the pleasure to work together with MIGS in common cause and we look forward to continue to partner with (executive director) Kyle Matthews in the ongoing pursuit of human rights and global security.”
For his part, Matthews was officially mum about the closure and “unable to comment” on what he and many people familiar with the matter called “a terrible development.”
“Budgetary constraints considered, this is a terrible shame,” one Concordia employee told The CJN on condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisals, “particularly when the university claims to ‘advance inclusion and social justice’ in its research sector.”
The CJN asked Concordia’s interim vice-president of research and graduate studies Effrosyni Diamantoudi for clarification about the closure, budget constraints, and the timing, as the term ‘genocide’ has been regularly thrown about the corridors of Montreal’s higher learning institutions recently.
University spokesperson Vannina Maestracci replied, telling The CJN, “We have been in a deficit situation since last year and have had to make cuts across the university while at the same time, over the last few years, the academic orientations of Concordia researchers involved in the area of human rights have diverged from the work of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies.”
Researchers have pursued “different initiatives and collaborations” she said. “Given this, last spring, we made the decision to gradually close the MIGS, a phase out that has just concluded.”
Asked for further clarification about “academic orientations” and diverging from the work, Maestracci replied: “It means that the work of human rights researchers and faculty was different from the projects taken on by MIGS.”
Professor Gunther Jikeli from the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at Indiana University visited and presented to the MIGS in 2017 and had high praise for its impact on the global discussion. “It has done excellent work in many areas,” he told The CJN, “from remembering the Holocaust to the threat of mass killings by violent jihadist groups… from all that I know it’s a big loss for Concordia, scholars in the field, and the wider public.”
MIGS Senior Distinguished Fellow, retired Lt-Gen. Roméo Dallaire, could not be reached for comment before press time.
Matthews was deeply involved for 13 years and served as executive director since 2016. “While the decision was not mine to make, I am looking forward to the next chapter and the opportunities ahead,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “It has been an honour to have worked closely with and mentored over 150 student interns from Concordia and other universities in Montreal and internationally, many who have now moved into leadership positions in Quebec, Canada and around the world. I am proud of the work the institute has undertaken at Concordia to counter hate speech, including our recent Government of Canada-funded work to combat antisemitism online.”
His colleague and former MIGS project coordinator Marie Lamensch lauded the institute’s accomplishments, notably striking partnerships with esteemed organizations including the Canadian government, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, the MacDonald-Laurier Institute, the Université du Québec à Montréal’s Chaire Raoul Dandurand and many more. “These collaborations were and remain invaluable” she also wrote on LinkedIn. “We have worked on combatting antisemitism and racism, mass atrocity and genocide prevention, online hate and misinformation, digital authoritarianism, foreign influence and transnational repression. These are challenges that are fundamental to confront today, aren’t they?”
The institute didn’t only kickstart projects related to the Holocaust, but other mass atrocities as well, including documenting eyewitness accounts of the 1932-33 Ukrainian Holodomor, and transcripts of Rwandan radio broadcasts that incited violence prior to the 1994 genocide of Tutsis, where between 500,000 and 1 million people were murdered in 100 days.
In 2022, MIGS led the Canadian Taskforce to Combat Online Antisemitism and prepared a 26-page report, to which Concordia’s link has disappeared, replaced with the Concordia web page announcing the closure.
The university says its $30-million-plus deficit prompted the decision, and has not announced any other initiative to fulfill MIGS’ long-stated mission to develop major projects and initiatives focusing on preventing and punishing mass atrocity crimes; providing decision-makers with insights and advocating for innovative public policies; and educating students, academics, journalists, government officials, civil society groups, and the wider public on threats to the national interest arising from human rights violations.
