Students crowded in the doorways of a packed Gardner Hall classroom Thursday night, sobered by the photographs of emaciated children in the front of the room.
During the Sudan Teach-In, professors Andy Reynolds and Julius Nyang'oro addressed the current humanitarian crisis in Darfur in the Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of Sudanese have been killed and 1.2 million have been forced from their homes.
"Women are being raped, children are being killed," Nyang'oro said. "These atrocities are the arm of the Sudanese government. The Sudanese government needs to be condemned in no uncertain terms."
The event was part of a larger initiative co-sponsored by the Campus Y committee Advocates for Human Rights, Amnesty International and Students United for a Responsible Global Environment.
Through the teach-in and other planned events throughout the year, organizers say they hope to promote awareness of and student action for the catastrophe in Sudan.
"A lot of people don't know about the crisis in Sudan," said Fauzia Tariq, a member of Advocates for Human Rights. "We're supposed to be a liberal campus where everybody knows what's going on in the world."
Reynolds, a political science professor, addressed the history of the conflict in the Sudan. He was careful to stress that the current situation in Darfur is just the most recent development in a larger crisis. He said that the country as a whole should be receiving equal attention.
"This is not a country like the U.K. where there is one province of instability," Reynolds said. "There is fragility across the board. Darfur is just one place of conflict."
Nyang'oro, chairman of UNC's Department of African and Afro-American Studies and a native of Tanzania, took a hard stance against Sudanese leaders and said that the situation in Sudan epitomizes African racial conflict.
