Walz was recently unveiled as the running mate for Vice President Kamala Harris, who is seeking to succeed President Joe Biden in the elections slated for November 4, 2024.
While Walz's nomination for the second-highest office in U.S. politics caught many by surprise, he stated on Tuesday that his transition from the classroom to politics was well thought out.
Walz explained that after many years as a teacher, his high school students encouraged him to run for elective office.
"It was my students; they encouraged me to run for office," Walz said, adding, "Don't ever underestimate teachers."
The phrase 'Don't underestimate teachers' is profound given Walz's accomplishments in the classroom.
Notably, Walz led a project analyzing the genocide of European Jews during World War II, guiding his students to use data to predict regions at risk of such atrocities.
Using cutting-edge mapping data from 1993, Walz's students accurately predicted the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, which claimed the lives of over a million people the following year.
In a past interview with Times, Walz recalled developing an interest in studying the Holocaust more deeply while teaching geography at Alliance High School in Nebraska. He assigned his class a project to investigate the conditions leading to mass murder.
Walz said his goal was to ensure that historical events were more than just memorized facts.
"The Holocaust is often taught purely as a historical event, an anomaly, a moment in time," he said.
"Students understood what had happened, that it was terrible, and that the people who did this were monsters."
In a separate interview with NPR in 2008, Walz recounted how his class correctly predicted the Genocide against the Tutsi due to the growing ethnic tensions in Rwanda at the time.
"One of the things that stood out to [the students] was the long-standing division along ethnic lines, with one group receiving favoritism during colonial times, and the resulting tension in a struggling economy," he revealed.
The Genocide against the Tutsi was perpetrated by the Hutu-led regime of Juvénal Habyarimana years after ethnic tensions that were fueled by Belgian colonial power, which was believed to have favored the Tutsis.
Travis Hoffman, a former student who participated in the project, described the study as "different and unusual."
"The biggest part was just the freedom to explore things. No matter how abnormal or far-fetched an idea might sound, you could form an opinion," Hoffman told Times 15 years after the project.
Lanae Merwin, another former student, found the report about the genocide happening in Rwanda "terribly chilling," but not entirely surprising.
"We'd discussed it in class, and it was happening. Though you don't want a prediction like that to come true," Merwin said.
In 2008, Walz criticized the international community's failure to act and stop the killings in Rwanda.
"If we understood this was a possibility, surely someone else did too," Walz said. "The need to act was stronger afterward when people realized it had happened."
He also criticized his former congressional colleagues for their lack of knowledge about global geography.
"You have to understand what causes genocide to prevent it from happening again," Walz said, adding that he received "blank stares" from House Armed Services Committee members when he mentioned the Durand Line, the disputed border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Former President Bill Clinton, who was in office during the Genocide against the Tutsi, admitted in his first visit to Rwanda four years later that the international community bore responsibility for the tragedy.
"The international community, together with nations in Africa, must bear its share of responsibility for this tragedy as well. We did not act quickly enough after the killing began.
"We should not have allowed the refugee camps to become a safe haven for the killers. We did not immediately call these crimes by their rightful name: genocide. We cannot change the past, but we can and must do everything in our power to help you build a future without fear, and full of hope," Clinton said at Kigali International Airport in 1998.
Wycliffe Nyamasege
