University Chicago and Peter Novick

Peter Novick: Often, the goal in these cases is not really comparison but equation, and even supersession, of others' experiences, according to Huffington Post Canada. The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission has just concluded its five-year investigation of the residential schools system, a traumatic program of forced assimilation imposed upon the Aboriginal populations of Canada from mid-1800s until 1996. An old professor of mine at the University of Chicago, the distinguished historian Peter Novick, called this dynamic, appropriately, the "Victimization Olympics." For scholars trained in specific fields of history, comparative analysis of different genocides can be valuable and productive, but for the general public, for ethnic victim groups, and even for academics with a more activist orientation to scholarship, comparing genocides often devolves into this kind of destructive competition. And unfortunately, the "Victimization Olympics" have begun again. Over the last decade, students have entered my university courses on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust and made instant equations made between Auschwitz and Canadian residential schools. I want to suggest that we stop comparing the experiences of victim groups and understand the specificity of each collective experience, while noting the diverse experiences of individuals within each group. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.