Youk Chhang
Director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia
"After the UN occupation of Cambodia and before the creation
of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC Cam), Peter Maguire
was among the first to travel to the Kingdom and raise the
question of Khmer Rouge war crimes accountability. Initially,
Maguire’s goal was to preserve historical evidence in order to
create an unassailable historical record of Khmer Rouge
atrocities. Although he worked with limited resources, Peter made
some remarkable discoveries. Not only was he among the first to
find and interview important Khmer Rouge victims and perpetrators,
Maguire also recovered highly incriminating documentary evidence
thought to be lost forever. At a very chaotic time in Cambodian
history, he returned photographs, documents, and films to our
people by donating them to DC Cam.
Maguire’s scholarship on the Nuremberg trials and the laws of war
gave him more perspective than many others in the field. For
example, Peter was the first to point out the added complexity of
applying the Nuremberg model to a Buddhist country like Cambodia.
When Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary surrendered to the Cambodian
government in 1996, Maguire called for either an amnesty in
exchange for testimony or a war crimes trial. Although he has been
extremely critical of the UN’s war crimes trials in Cambodia,
Peter has been a steadfast supporter of DC Cam’s efforts
throughout the trial process. When defense lawyer Michael Karnavas
called into question the validity of evidence he gave to DC Cam,
Maguire wrote: "I have never pretended to be an objective
observer and have always wanted the Khmer Rouge leaders to be held
accountable. I held these views long before DC Cam came into
existence…. I do not attempt to try to be neutral. I’m not neutral
between the camp guards and the prisoners, between the raped women
and the rapists.’" When in Cambodia, Maguire always took time
out of his schedule to mentor DC Cam’s first generation of
Cambodian scholars. He encouraged DC Cam’s Farina So to apply to
Columbia University’s prestigious oral history program. After she
was admitted, Peter made sure that she paid no tuition and even
bought her a plane ticket from Phnom Penh to New York City. In the
winter of 2012, Peter traveled with a DC Cam team to a Cambodian
military base in Kompong Speu to teach the laws of war to
Cambodian officers. Most recently, in 2012, he positively
identified a Western prisoner at Tuol Sleng Prison whom Cambodian,
American, and UN investigators could not identify.
Nobody has ever been able to buy or intimidate Peter Maguire and
as a result, he is able to take an honest look at Cambodian
society. He has no agenda other than to make us examine ourselves.
Maguire does not cry with us over our past; instead, what he shows
us could help us move beyond being mere survivors and take a
larger part in our own futures."
Peter Dimock
Former senior non-fiction editor at Random House, Columbia
University Press, and author
"Professional book editors quickly learn to distinguish
between scholars and writers or they do not keep their jobs for
very long. It is really quite rare to encounter first-rate
scholars and researchers who are also truly original and profound
writers able to change the way readers’ experience themselves and
their world by the way they shape language on the page. Peter
Maguire is that rare scholar whose excellence of analytic thought
and commitment to the research required by his historical
materials are matched by an equally intense dedication to the
mastery of the art of getting across the meaning and potential
intellectual and moral uses of the knowledge he creates through
his honed and finely crafted prose.
I have been involved in working with Peter Maguire as an editor on
all three of his four published books to date. My heaviest
intervention was in his Facing Death in Cambodia. Editing
that project was as rewarding, and taught me as much about both
history and its literary expression, as any engagement I have had
with any other author during a long career. Other authors whose
work I have edited include Toni Morrison, Amartya Sen, and Paul
Kennedy. I respect Peter’s research abilities and his dedication
to his subject matter immensely. I am even more impressed,
however, with his ability to develop for each project an
appropriate voice and register of moral engagement through which
to bring his reader intellectually and emotionally into the
historical worlds he describes and analyzes so memorably and
originally.
While I have never attended one of his classes, I have been
present at several lectures with question and answer periods
afterwards and have watched him interact with undergraduates,
graduate students, and fellow authors and colleagues many times.
He is one of the most engaging, lively, unpretentious, and
enjoyable speakers and storytellers I have ever known. He listens
and considers and sifts the points of view of others well—and does
not hesitate to give others acknowledged credit when their ideas
influence or change his own thinking. At the same time, he holds
on to the value of his own best thought tenaciously and does not
back down from his own best arguments.
I believe Peter’s gifts as a writer come primarily from two
sources: first, from his work ethic, and, second, from his
knowledge of good writing’s affinities with uninhibited, unforced,
authentic interchanges among living voices discussing issues about
which the speakers care passionately."
Mike Sledge
author of
Soldier Dead: How We Recover, Identify, Bury, and Honor Our
Military Fallen
"While conducting research at the National Archives for
Soldier Dead, it was my good fortune to meet Peter Maguire.
At that time he had just published Law and War: An American Story.
Maguire, an independent thinker who pushes aside all preconceived
notions of academic pedigrees, became interested in my work, but
not because I was an established professor with all the
professional bona fides. In fact, I was quite the opposite, a
full-time Certified Public Accountant moonlighting as a historian.
He recognized me as a fellow autodidact, who was clearly committed
to the work necessary to research, write, and publish a book that
still stands as the seminal work that draws from disparate fields
to examine what happens to our military members once they are
dead. In short, Maguire recognized passion and devotion to a
project that no clear benefit to me other than satisfying the need
to put light on a subject formally hidden in shadows. And (what I
write next will really illustrate his own passion regarding
excellent academic work) Maguire, himself, had nothing to gain
from helping me move from research to publication with Columbia
University Press. He truly is a person who sees the big picture,
not asking, "How does this help me?" It would do the
world good for Maguire to be able to help those who are driven to
pursue a higher cause other than their own career."
Prof. Sophal Ear
author of
Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines
Democracy
and
The Hungry Dragon: How China’s Resources Quest Is Reshaping the
World
"Dr. Peter Maguire is a true, unadulterated champion of
independent thought. His own scholarship and his impact on other
scholars are unparalleled. I was a tenure-track assistant
professor, fumbling around for a publisher, when I stumbled on
Peter’s second Columbia University Press book,
Facing Death in Cambodia (2005). It quoted extensive
passages from my undergraduate political science honors thesis,
calling attention to Western academic supporters of the Khmer
Rouge. The thesis, which delved into the denialism of Noam
Chomsky, among others, had already earned me the threat of a libel
lawsuit from one of my subjects, based in the UK. Peter saw my
work for what it was, the cri de coeur of a twenty-year-old
survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide who wanted accountability.
I wrote to Peter for advice about getting my first book
published--and the rest is history. We met up in Moss Landing, CA,
near where I worked at the time, and then at Bard College, where
he invited me to take part in a War Crimes and Human Rights Law
conference with incredibly distinguished speakers. More
importantly, in the intervening years, he cleared the brush from
my book manuscript. Without his help I wouldn’t have gotten a book
contract and been able to publish my tenure book,
Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines
Democracy
(Columbia University Press, 2013), in which I critically examine
donors’ complicity with a corrupt government to take away
democratic accountability from the people of Cambodia. This won me
no friends in the neoliberal international financial institutions
where I’d once worked, but the ideas from the book have entered
congressional legislation. When my published criticism of
corruption and political interference in the Khmer Rouge Tribunal
earned me persona non grata status from the then US Ambassador to
Cambodia, Peter doubled down in his support of me, while my then
dean quipped that I should be flown to Cambodia to apologize to
the ambassador! Simply put, without Peter’s help, I wouldn’t be
tenured and able to exercise academic freedom today.
Almost every other day, I’m asked to comment on current events in
Cambodia for one news outlet or another. Speaking truth to power
for those who can’t speak inside Cambodia is my duty—the rent I
pay for my room here on earth, to quote Muhammad Ali. Fainting
Robin Foundation perpetuates Dr. Maguire’s already stellar legacy
of shepherding countless scholars like myself, and those far less
fortunate, whose ideas cannot and must not be extinguished by
academic orthodoxy."
Jennifer Harden
"After my sister Katherine Ann Grgich was murdered in
Cambodia in 2013, the State Department accepted the Cambodian
government’s claim that her brutal and senseless killing was an
"accident." Although there was overwhelming evidence to
the contrary, our government did nothing to bring her killers to
justice. A mutual friend said that he knew someone who might be
able to help and introduced me to Peter Maguire. When we finally
met in person, Peter was very compassionate about my family’s
loss, but at the same time, frank with me about the reality of
"justice" in Cambodia. Peter continues assisting me in
my search for justice and has helped me navigate this living
nightmare. His willingness and selfless determination have given
me hope that Katherine’s murderer(s) will be captured and the
truth surrounding the cover up of her death will one day be
exposed."
Robert Carmichael
Cambodia correspondent: Voice of America, Radio Australia,
Deutsche Welle and author of
Leaving: A Disappearance, A Daughter’s Search, and Cambodia’s
First War Criminal
"I first met Peter in 2001, shortly after I came to live and
work in Cambodia. In the intervening years, he has proven a
supportive colleague whose insights into stories I have written
about Cambodia, in particular those about the Khmer Rouge
tribunal, were always helpful. More than a decade later, my book –
Leaving: A Disappearance, A Daughter’s Quest, and Cambodia’s
First War Criminal
– was approved for publication by Columbia University Press. I can
say without hesitation that Peter has proved central to that
acceptance process: when the time came for me to find a publisher,
he generously offered to help. Although a number of people had
made similar offers, Peter was alone in delivering. In addition,
his skills both as a published writer and as a recognized
authority on Cambodia and war crimes tribunals have been
invaluable in ensuring that my manuscript attained the highest
standards. His constructive criticism and judicious edits have
contributed to a more nuanced and balanced manuscript, for which I
am most grateful."
Philippe Peycam
"It is not easy to write about someone whose motives and
actions are always complex and sometimes contradictory. Yet, in my
numerous encounters with Peter Maguire, I have recognized four
constant qualities: intellectual integrity, justice, honor, and
social responsibility. I first met Peter in Cambodia in 2003 when
I served as founding director of the Center for Khmer Studies, a
hybrid Cambodian-international academic institution that aimed to
support the rise of a new generation of humanistic intellectuals
in Cambodia. At that time, Peter was working on his second book,
Facing Death in Cambodia. I remember his enthusiasm and
determination in the way he conducted his research, despite the
difficulties he was facing in unmasking former Khmer Rouge
perpetrators. He never gave in to the often patronizing and
hypocritical consensual discourse of condemnation of the Pol Pot
regime by mainstream advocates of Cambodia’s post-war
“development,” which too often forgets Western responsibilities in
the rise and continuing existence of the Khmer Rouge. After Peter
gave me his first book on the Nuremberg trials (Law and War), I realized how his involvement in Cambodia was informed by the
same quest for justice and social responsibility, regardless of
contexts, beyond the conventional moralistic discourses.
Peter and I shared an admiration for the work and life of the
Alsatian ethno-linguist Sylvain Vogel. This appreciation for
Sylvain as both a brilliant scholar and an engaged social actor,
was balanced by a shared disbelief in the way a researcher of his
level could be kept out of official institutional academic circles
even when his work far surpassed in quality what was being
produced in these circles. My position as director of CKS was a
privileged one in that I could not only assess the intrinsic
quality of the work of scholars working on and around Cambodia. I
could also gauge their commitment vis-à-vis the Center’s original
mission which was to serve as a real intellectual meeting ground
and a program supporting Cambodian future scholars.
Here, I sometimes encountered scholars ready, willing and able to
use their knowledge to help revive a vibrant intellectual life in
the war-shattered country. Sylvain was one of them. Not only did
he set up Cambodia’s first linguistics program in Cambodia at the
Royal University of Phnom Penh, he also taught Sanskrit there.
During his fifteen years in the country, he remained relegated to
second-class citizenship by the French academic establishment.
Vogel’s teaching at the university meanwhile, always in Khmer (the
Cambodian national language), not only trained Cambodian
linguists, but also helped the Cambodian academy address one of
the crucial questions for the country’s “sustainable development”:
that of language modernization. This groundbreaking work ceased to
receive support from the French embassy and Sylvain was forced to
leave Southeast Asia. Perhaps his work was not "visible"
enough? Perhaps it did not match the media savvy French “effort”
in Angkor. Peter’s support for Sylvain, beyond his admiration for
the scholar, stems from a recognition of the need to protect the
integrity of scholars who, like Sylvain can easily be marginalized
by "peers" or crushed by the financiers, diplomats or
technocrats who employ them.
Another aspect of Peter’s engagement for justice, also shared with
Sylvain, was his commitment to support the often forgotten members
of the "montagnard" communities who live between the
logic of national control by three adjacent countries: Laos,
Cambodia and Vietnam. These groups, whose cultures and attachments
to their ancestors’ land are being slowly eradicated, sided with
the French and American militaries during the two Indochinese
wars. Most of them were abandoned to their fate when these armies
retreated from the region. One connection between Peter and
Sylvain, beyond their scholarly commitments, is a shared sense of
lost honor and betrayal vis-à-vis these communities. They,
together with a few others, sought to help members of the Bunong
community who were persecuted by the Vietnamese and Cambodian
armies, bringing them to safety, often to seek asylum in the
United States. This is a less known example where Peter’s sense of
honor and respect conflicts with the cold logic of raison d’État,
when one’s own country fails to face the consequences of its past
acts. "Not in our Name" is a slogan that could
characterize his quest for justice and honor.
Towards the end of my tenure at CKS, as I was busy revising the
book manuscript put aside for years because of my busy work, Peter
introduced me to Peter Dimock, editor at Columbia University
Press. Dimock is another example of uncompromising dedication to
academic scholarship, someone who believes in and supports
authors’ capacity to get their message through, with an amazing
ability to sense when their works are important and ought to be
brought to the wider public debate. For his own exigencies, Peter
Dimock also paid a price. His commitment to innovative and quality
publication did not fit the fluctuating demands of an "audit
academic and publishing culture" mainly interested in fame
and numbers, a trend that too often characterizes today’s
universities increasingly operating as corporates. Dimock’s
intellectual and professional integrity was best attested by the
fact that his former colleagues at CUP continued to hold him as
their standard bearer, long after he left them. I later
encountered Peter Maguire under much more unpleasant circumstances
when I was embroiled in a personally destructive fight against a
capricious faction of my board that sought to fire me without
substantiated reasons nor proper compensation after ten years in
Cambodia building the Center. Peter helped me to get over the
emotional and personal distress this action was causing while
making sure that I would be fairly compensated. He understood the
larger issues at stake: beyond a petty power play and attempt to
tarnish my integrity. He was outraged by a flawed system that
allowed socially irresponsible people to destroy careers and ruin
lives on a whim. He helped extricate me without damaging my basic
interests and career. Together with a few other courageous
individuals, he forced the board to face the fact that a project
like CKS, so important for a country like Cambodia, ought not be
left at the mercy of faraway, unaccountable interests. Here too,
Peter stood, not just talked, against what he regarded as a moral
duty to defend my personal and intellectual integrity and refused
to yield to irresponsible behavior no matter the consequences.
In this dark era of collective blindness, where neoliberal
coercive rule governs people as commodities, institutions as
corporates and communities as liabilities, where the mechanisms of
a neutral, democratic state are rarely found to protect, the
moral, social and intellectual. The commitment of Peter Maguire is
a light that helps one believes in justice and
responsibility."
Lt. Col. Conrad Crane
West Point and Army War College professor and author of
FM3-24 Counterinsurgency (COIN) and Cassandra in Oz:
Counterinsurgency and Future War
"Peter Maguire has always been the model for me of a true
"Renaissance man." I first met him when he was teaching
at Bard College and organized a conference on ethics and war. He
remains the most astute observer I know about the intricacies and
outcomes of the war crimes process, not just after World War II
but also in modern venues. But his life experience goes far beyond
such narrow academic interests. His surfing days are legendary. He
has taught martial arts to foreign militaries. He has designed his
own line of watercraft and run his own business. He has written
about a wide variety of topics ranging from the Nuremburg trials
to the marijuana drug trade to war crimes in Cambodia. He has
traveled all over the world and made his mark wherever he decided
to apply himself. He has never let a real "box" restrain
him, and is now managing programs to encourage other scholars with
similar enlightening interests and innovative inclinations. Peter
Maguire has helped make the world a much more lively and
interesting place, and deserves extensive support in his efforts
to assist others to do the same."