Interview-Dr. Harrell

Aisha J. Brownlee
12:10-1:00
For my interview, I choose to speak with Dr. Jules Harrell, who is my psychology teacher. I am a psychology major and found it important to interview him on our research project. Our group question for the freshman seminar project was what are the political and psychological frameworks of the Congolese people that contribute to the current genocide? I myself have a particular interest on the effects of people in hostile environments and how genocide affects their states of mind. I began the interview with asking Dr. Harrell what was his intake on genocide. He talked about when looking at genocide one has to first ask, why now? Why has the problem exploded to something this immense? When there are two groups fused to coexist with one another, tensions arise. Contributing to these tensions is always a third element, where if one were to remove this element, the problem wouldn’t progress as largely as it has gotten in the Congo. The third element in the Congo is the mineral coltan. This mineral has kept the fight between Tutsi rebels and national armed forces ongoing. This mineral continues to fuel the conflict by providing sources of funding for armed groups. The interview was then directed towards what psychological factors contribute to some of these leaders mind sets. We are all capable of ruthless. What I learned was that when a human is reduced to their lowest, the oppressor has a better chance of destroying the person causing their brains to go through mis-wiring which can ultimately set the person off. Also contributing to a person’s destruction is their social environments. If someone is raised in a destructive environment, that can alter a person’s state of mind and their perception on the world. Without love or a stable social environment one is pushed toward self-destruction resulting in mass effect of the people around them. Our interview taped deeply inside the human psyche and was very helpful to our research project.