Enduring Issues Essay Setup

Suggested issue: Human rights violations (or Power and abuse of power)

Sample document set: (1) account of the Armenian Genocide during WWI, (2) description of Stalin's Great Purge, (3) Wannsee Conference documents on the Final Solution, (4) Nuremberg Trial materials, (5) Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Thesis template: "Human rights violations is an enduring issue because throughout history governments have committed mass atrocities against their own peoples and against others, in violation of fundamental human dignity. This issue is visible in the Armenian Genocide during WWI, in Stalin's Great Purge, and in the Nazi Holocaust, each of which represented systematic state-organized murder on enormous scale. These atrocities produced the international human rights framework that emerged after WWII, in efforts to establish that no government's sovereignty could legitimize such crimes."

Extemp parallel: Maria should approach this essay as a three-minute extemp on "How have states violated human rights, and how has the international community responded?" Body points on the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, and the postwar human rights regime. Close with a continuity point to later genocides (Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia) covered in Unit 10.10.

Second essay setup, alternative issue: Power and abuse of power. Document set could pair totalitarian leader speeches (Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini), accounts of victims, and the postwar response. The thesis

would argue that absolute power has historically been used for absolute abuse, and that constraining such power has been one of the central political projects of the modern era.