Inside SSU’s High-Stakes Human Rights Simulation: Preventing the Unthinkable
How do human beings work together across cultures, languages, and national borders to prevent an atrocity? This is the urgent question at the heart of a simulation that Sonoma State University students, SSU faculty, and a handful of partners from other universities participated in last month.
The exercise was the capstone of POLS 250, a three-unit Department of History and Political Science course in which students deepen their understanding of what is involved in predicting and preventing atrocities and genocides.
POLS 250 is a required course for the recently created Human Rights Studies Minor at SSU and will be offered again in Fall 2026. Both the course and the new minor are part of a broader effort to create a space at SSU for study and exploration of human rights and social justice issues.
“Opportunities like this are more typically found at much larger universities, so we’re especially proud to offer access to such a unique and powerful human rights learning experience here at SSU,” said Troi Carleton, Dean of the College of Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts. “At a time when human rights challenges fill the headlines both at home and abroad — and touch the lives of many of our students and their families — this simulation is both relevant and urgent. Experiences like this one give SSU students a chance to step into the roles of policymakers and change makers."
The simulation was created and facilitated by James Finkel, a 35-year veteran of the U.S. government who spent a significant portion of his career shaping U.S. foreign policy with respect to genocide and atrocity prevention.
In the simulation, the students were asked to grapple with a hypothetical scenario in the year 2030. The hypothetical events take place in Brčko, a multi-ethinic city in Bosnia and Herzegovina that is directly across the Sava River from Croatia, and also close to the Bosnia and Herzegovina border with Serbia. In real life, the 1995 U.S.-brokered Dayton Accords brought an end to the three-and-a-half year Bosnian War and led to the creation of the single sovereign state known as Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is composed of two parts: the largely Serb-populated Republika Srpska and the mainly Croat-Bosniak-populated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In Finkel’s imagined 2030 scenario, ethnic tensions in the region have re-emerged in the wake of an economic collapse. Students playing the roles of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, Croatia, and a coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were tasked with evaluating the risk of an atrocity and responding in ways that are consistent with the values and strategic objectives of their assigned groups. Finkel himself played the roles of China, Russia, and Serbia.
“The simulation gives students a unique opportunity to learn firsthand about making decisions with incomplete and sometimes conflicting information under deadline pressure,” said Professor Cynthia Boaz, the course instructor. “And like model UN (United Nations), it demands that the students practice and demonstrate valuable skills that come into play across career tracks,” including oral presentation, negotiation, collaboration and policy writing.
The immersive experience was designed to help students understand how international organizations and multilateral diplomacy work in practice, not just in textbooks. The simulation took place over two days in November and capped nearly a semester of preparation.
The simulation unfolded in five rounds, during which the student teams were provided with new information or intelligence to analyze, and then respond to, in a manner consistent with their assigned group’s interest. After one particularly alarming information update, the team of students representing the United States proposed the deployment of U.S. troops in a peacekeeping role, to prevent a repeat of atrocities like those that occurred in the region in the late 20th century.
Each group had a chance to present at the end of a simulation round, then all five student groups had a chance to present and take questions from faculty and other participants in a concluding plenary session at the end of the second day.
Victoria Weidhase, a Sonoma State political science major who plans to graduate in Spring 2026 with minor concentrations in both Jewish studies and human rights studies, said the experience reinforced her interest in government service as a career path. Weidhase was part of the seven-student team representing the U.S. in the simulation exercise.
“Our team was very focused on balancing trade-offs. We knew that any approach to preventing a potential genocide that included lethal force could jeopardize civilians,” Weidhase said. “My father was a U.S. Navy combat veteran, so I was very cognizant of the risks both to our troops and to civilians as we were discussing options.”
Lia Anselmino plans to graduate from SSU in 2028 and is a political science major pursuing a human rights studies minor. She was assigned to the team that represented the United Nations and other large multilateral organizations like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The simulation experience was not unfamiliar to Anselmino, since she had participated in model UN beginning in high school.
“As a team, our main focus was ensuring peace in the region and bringing in humanitarian aid so that all the citizens of Bosnia could experience a stable and safe life free of conflict,” she said. Anselmino said she was impressed during the simulation by how quickly the different teams moved to engage in dialogue and diplomacy to prevent an escalation of the situation.
For Anselmino, who is considering an eventual career path in international relations, the issues she encountered in POLS 250 sharpened her focus on genocide prevention and expanded her thinking about the types of organizations she might eventually want to work for.
Anselmino plans to take the Holocaust and Genocide Lecture Series companion course (POLS 307 / HIST 307) next semester. In summer 2026, she plans to participate in an International Education class in Ireland led by Professor Boaz that will explore the history of the Great Hunger through a genocide and human rights study lens.
Professor Samuel Cohen, who teaches history at SSU and specializes in late antique and early medieval history, was the faculty advisor supporting the student team representing Croatia in the simulation. Cohen brought familiarity with the history, geography, and people of the Balkan region to the assignment.
“From the start of the simulation, it was immediately clear that the students I was working with were extraordinarily well-prepared, and that they were fully inhabiting their assigned roles,” he said.
Cohen saw his role in the exercise as primarily a “guardrail,” occasionally reminding his group to consider whether their positions and actions were consistent with Croatia’s interests. “I encouraged them to think about what it meant to be Croatia in that situation. How do we deal with a situation in a country that is a neighbor and shares our border, but that is also distinct?”
While the subject matter of the simulation was undeniably heavy, Cohen said the prevailing mood was one of optimism about the potential for multilateral cooperation to solve seemingly intractable problems. He said the experience, and the apparent student enthusiasm for deep role-playing, has prompted him to think about including simulation exercises in some of his own teaching, for example when teaching about the Roman Senate.
Boaz said the simulation exceeded her expectations, both in terms of learning opportunities and student participation, and she credited the simulation for an uptick in student interest in the POLS 345 Model United Nations course offered in the spring.
SSU students and faculty were joined in the simulation by a handful of faculty and student participants from both California State University Fresno and Santa Rosa Junior College.
Boaz said she is already thinking of ways to expand the simulation program in future years by involving more SSU students from a broader range of academic disciplines and collaborating with additional universities.
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Learn more about SSU’s Human Rights Studies Minor here.
Learn more about the Atrocity and Genocide Prevention course (POLS 250) here.