A humanitarian icon, whose efforts during the 1994 Rwandan genocide have been internationally celebrated, will be speaking at Binghamton University Thursday, Oct. 12.

Paul Rusesabagina — played by Don Cheadle in the 2004 film “Hotel Rwanda” — will be coming to BU to promote his book, “An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography.” In it, he discusses the Rwandan culture in which he grew up, the conflict itself and the issue of “moral responsibility.”

In less than 100 days during the spring of 1994, 800,000 Rwandans were killed when a group of extremists from the Hutu tribes overtook the government, which had until that point been headed by the Tutsi tribe. Those killed were moderate Hutus and Tutsis who did not support the violent overthrow.

In the midst of the conflict, Rusesabagina, a hotel manager at the Mille Collines whose mother was a Tutsi and whose father was a Hutu, succeeded in sheltering over 1,260 people in the hotel for over three months as they waited for help to arrive. He was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Immortal Chaplain’s Prize for Humanity and the National Civil Rights Freedom Award for his efforts.

Less than a decade later, in 2003, another violent conflict erupted in the Sudan’s Darfur region. The genocide has claimed the lives of 500,000 people.

Jean Quataert, a professor of history at BU, calls the condition in Darfur one of “unmistakable genocide” and urges students to attend Rusesabagina’s speech, calling it a “unique opportunity to examine … a genocide where nothing was done … but which shows what must be done now [in Darfur]. This cannot happen again.”

In a letter from Hillel, the Jewish student organization at Binghamton which sponsored the event, the importance of Rusesabagina’s visit to campus can be stressed in relation to history. According to the organizers, he “… will also discuss how even after people became aware of these atrocities, help was still slow to arrive, as well as the fact that as long as some people continue to ignore the plights of others, tragedies like this can happen again.”