In 2022, the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia (WCEE) partnered with The Reckoning Project (TRP), an international NGO collecting legally-admissible testimonies from victims and witnesses of potential war crimes in Ukraine. From September 2022 - February 2024, WCEE’s team of faculty and students translated, edited, and analyzed testimonies from more than 300 incidents and prepared them for legal, archival, commemorative, and educational purposes.
In February 2024, WCEE released a website featuring an archive of testimonies and two interactive maps that allow users to visualize patterns of violence and other reported war crimes.
These resources serve as a foundation for the free teaching guide and textbook developed by WCEE, in partnership with the University of Michigan's Center for Education Design, Evaluation, and Research (CEDER), for high school educators to teach about the war and broader issues such as human rights, genocide, war crimes, and sovereignty. The curriculum satisfies multiple high school social studies standards in World and U.S. History, as well as reading standards for informational texts.
WCEE also offers recommendations on how to integrate the high school teaching guide and textbook into college-level courses to facilitate informed discussions and deepen students' understanding of the conflict’s complexities and global significance. For courses in the social sciences, humanities, and law, the guide suggests a range of issues, discussion questions, and possible assignments.
Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and in collaboration with Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science and Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (KNU), WCEE published its textbook and teaching guides in Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian. Versions in French, Polish, and other critical languages will be available in the near future.
Click the images below to download the textbook, teaching guide, and higher education guide free of charge.
For questions and comments, contact WCEE Special Projects Manager Derek Groom at djgroom@umich.edu.
The Reckoning Project at WCEE in the news
"New U-M website documents war crimes in Ukraine," The University Record, 2/28/24
"Holding Russia to Account for War Crimes in Ukraine," Vanity Fair, 8/24/22
"U-M joins project investigating war crimes in Ukraine," The University Record, 9/21/22
"Patterns of Force: Preserving Memories and Finding Justice in the Shadow of the Ukraine War," Rackham News, 1/4/23
