Radcliffe alumna Alison Des Forges ’64, an expert on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, was among those who died on Continental Airlines Flight 3407 when it crashed near Buffalo on February 12. A senior advisor to Human Rights Watch for almost two decades, Des Forges wrote the definitive account of the Rwanda genocide, Leave None to Tell the Story, published by Human Rights Watch in 1999. She also received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1999.

“Alison Des Forges was one of those rare stars in the human rights firmament: an erudite scholar, an accessible and prolific communicator, an indefatigable advocate and activist, and a human being of extraordinary warmth, personal loyalty, and humility,” says Jacqueline Bhabha, the Jeremiah Smith Jr. Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School, director of the Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies, and a lecturer in public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. “Her contribution to our understanding of the tragic failures of the international community before and during the Rwandan genocide is unrivaled.”

Jennifer Leaning ’67, SMH ’70, a former senior advisor in international and policy studies at the Radcliffe Institute and a professor of the practice of international health at the Harvard School of Public Health, says, “Alison Des Forges was the unquestioned reigning authority on the Rwandan genocide and the most clear-sighted and courageous analyst of atrocities still ongoing in the Great Lakes region of Africa.”

The Radcliffe Institute joins Human Rights Watch in mourning the loss of this courageous activist and scholar.

Photo courtesy of Human Rights Watch