Ben Kiernan

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Benedict F. "Ben" Kiernan (born 1953) is an Australian-born American academic and historian who is the

Genocide Studies Program at Yale University
.

Biography

Kiernan visited Cambodia in his early twenties, but left before the Khmer Rouge expelled all foreigners in 1975. Though he initially doubted the reported scale of genocide then being perpetrated in Democratic Kampuchea, he changed his mind in 1978[1][2][3] after beginning a series of interviews with several hundred refugees from Cambodia. He learned the Khmer language, carried out research in Cambodia and among refugees abroad, and has since written many books on the topic.

From 1980 onwards, Kiernan worked with

Yale Center for International and Area Studies in 1994, and the comparative Genocide Studies Program in 1998. Kiernan currently teaches history courses on Southeast Asia, the Vietnam War, and genocides through the ages.[4]

In 1995, a Khmer Rouge court indicted, tried and sentenced Kiernan in absentia for "prosecuting and terrorizing the Cambodian resistance patriots".[5]

Select publications and awards

His 2007 book Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (Yale University Press) received the 2008 gold medal from the US Independent Publishers Association for the best work of history published in 2007,[6] and the German Studies Association's biennial Sybil Halpern Milton Memorial Book Prize[7] for the best book published in 2007 or 2008 dealing with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust in its broadest context, covering the fields of history, political science, and other social sciences, literature, art, and photography.

In June 2009, the book's German translation, Erde und Blut: Völkermord und Vernichtung von der Antike bis heute, won first place in Germany's Nonfiction Book of the Month Prize (Die Sachbücher des Monats).[8]

Criticism of Kiernan's scholarship

Kiernan's work before 1978, especially his work with the publication News from Kampuchea, was criticised as pro-Khmer Rouge when the Cambodian genocide was ongoing.[9][10]

While Kiernan has become a critic of Khmer Rouge behaviour,

Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1978."[11]

In 1994, Kiernan was awarded a $499,000 grant by the

Sydney Institute, stated that Kiernan had "barracked for the Khmer Rouge when the Cambodian killing fields were choked with corpses".[12] The Morris article was challenged by 29 Cambodia specialists who praised Kiernan as "a first-rate historian and an excellent choice for the State Department grant".[13]

Kiernan's 2017 work Việt Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present was criticized for his inability to read primary sources, his poor choice of secondary sources, and the lack of updating scholarship on both premodern Vietnam and the Vietnam War, among "many factual errors, misinterpretations, and problems" in the book.[14]

Selected bibliography

References

  1. ^ Kiernan, Benedict (17 November 1978). "Why's Kampuchea Gone to Pot?". Nation Review (Melbourne).
  2. doi:10.1080/14672715.1979.10424016. Archived
    from the original on 4 June 2011. Retrieved 24 August 2017.
  3. ISBN 0-671-44022-5
    .
  4. ^ "Profile of Ben Kiernan". Yale University Department of History. Archived from the original on 30 August 2016. Retrieved 7 September 2016. His undergraduate courses include Southeast Asia from Earliest Times to 1900, Southeast Asia since 1900, Vietnamese History from Earliest Times, The Vietnam War, Environmental History of Southeast Asia, and graduate seminars on the Vietnam War and on various aspects of the history of genocide.
  5. ISBN 978-0-300-14434-5
    .
  6. ^ "2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards Results". Archived from the original on 17 October 2018. Retrieved 7 December 2009.
  7. ^ "2009 Sybil Halpern Milton Prize Winner". Retrieved 7 December 2009.[permanent dead link]
  8. ^ "Sachbücher des Monats Juni 2009" [Non-fiction books of the month June 2009] (in German). Archived from the original on 28 December 2009. Retrieved 7 December 2009.
  9. ^ Morris, Stephen (17 April 1995). "The Wrong Man to Investigate Cambodia". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 7 July 2011.
  10. ISBN 974-579-532-1
    .
  11. Rodman, Peter (March 1996). "Grantsmanship & the Killing Fields". Commentary
    .
  12. ^ Dilger, Patrick (April 1996). "Back to the "Killing Fields"". Yale Alumni Magazine. Archived from the original on 26 May 2007.
  13. ^ Morris, Stephen J. "Disowning Morris". The Phnom Penh Post. Archived from the original on 6 April 2023. Retrieved 20 May 2019.
  14. S2CID 151189860
    .

External links
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