Eric Markusen once said that the battleground of his youth, including the suicides of both his parents, answered in part why he became a scholar of genocide.
Markusen, a Southwest Minnesota State University professor in Marshall and leading expert on genocide, died of pancreatic cancer in Marshall on Monday. He was 60.
Markusen's quest to understand the genocidal mentality took him to death camps, former Soviet satellites, the killing fields of Cambodia, bombed villages of Croatia and Bosnia, the border of Ethiopia/Eritrea, and to Darfur.
"He had to have his work be a tool for good in the world," said longtime friend Greg Owen, consulting scientist at Wilder Research, St. Paul.
For several years earlier this decade, Markusen was director of research for the Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Copenhagen.
Markusen's mother struggled with schizophrenia all her life, and his father, who served in the Navy during World War II, was an alcoholic. They committed suicide during his high school years, according to an article in the Nov. 5, 2000, Star Tribune.
Markusen spent time in boarding schools, one of which liberally doled out corporal punishment.
"I just think that those experiences gave me a slightly heightened sense of vulnerability -- how we all are vulnerable. Sort of a sense of 'There but for the grace of God ...' " Markusen said in 2000.
Markusen, a professor of sociology and social work for 17 years at Southwest Minnesota State, wasn't deskbound, said Stephen Feinstein, director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. Markusen favored field research, visiting the scenes of genocides around the world.
"He was really willing to go into a risky situation to get evidence," Feinstein said.
Markusen, knowing his cancer prognosis, recently went to work in Ethiopia for the Danish Center, returning to Marshall just before Christmas.
His work was used by the U.S. State Department and former Secretary of State Colin Powell in a presentation to the United Nations about Darfur.
Markusen, the author of many articles and books on subjects such as genocide, nuclear warfare and strategic bombing, co-authored, with Harvard University's Robert Jay Lifton, "The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat."
He is survived by his wife, Randi of Marshall; daughter Maria of Minneapolis; stepmother Jean Erickson of Rapid City, S.D., and brother Paul of Wayzata.
Services are pending.
Ben Cohen bcohen@startribune.com
