Sunday, October 17, 2021Sunday, October 17, 2021


Presented by

Convened and presented on Sunday, October 17, 2021 by the Center for Jewish History and jMUSE with the generous support of David Berg Foundation and Leon Levy Foundation.


About the Symposium

Confronting Antisemitism’s unprecedented, public, international gathering of cultural leaders, scholars, and experts will offer cutting-edge analysis and strategies; identify a landscape of possible initiatives and actions; and galvanize the community. Distinguished speakers’ insights and experiences will catalyze cultural institutions to take a new, crucial role in empowering members of the public to confront antisemitism and, ultimately, to achieve new understanding.

As trusted public institutions with diverse audiences, how can archives, libraries, museums, and cultural institutions use their unique strengths to combat antisemitism and create lasting change? This critical question will be at the core of the Confronting Antisemitism symposium.

Symposium topics range from museum perspectives on modern-day antisemitism, Holocaust denial and revisionism in public institutions to examining the sources of antisemitism and the dangers it poses to a free society. More than 20 experts from universities, archives, libraries, and museums around the world will participate in the symposium and help encourage a global conversation about the impact and lasting relevance of antisemitism.

Produced by Michael S. Glickman and jMUSE, this symposium has been designed for a public audience—including students—who will have an opportunity to hear from dozens of experts from universities, archives, libraries, and museums around the world as they help encourage a global conversation about the impact and lasting relevance of antisemitism.

Please consider joining with the Center for Jewish History in empowering diverse communities to confront antisemitism. Your gift, of any amount, will be a vital contribution to initiatives like this one. To support programs like this, please consider making a gift to the Center for Jewish History or text SYMPOSIUM TO 707070.

Schedule

October 17, 2021
OPENING REMARKS
1:00PM ET
Dr. Peter Baldwin

Chairman of the Board of Directors, Center for Jewish History; Professor of History, UCLA

Michael S. Glickman

Founder & CEO, jMUSE

SESSION ONE, FEATURED REMARKS
Reflections on the History and Persistence of Antisemitism
1:15PM ET
Sir Simon Schama

University Professor of History and Art History, Columbia University

SESSION TWO, PANEL DISCUSSION:
Advancing Awareness and Sparking Change: Museums and Libraries in the Fight Against Antisemitism
1:45PM ET
Ronald Leopold

Executive Director, Anne Frank House, Amsterdam

Dr. Louise Mirrer

President & CEO, New-York Historical Society

Dr. Dariusz Stola

Professor of History, Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Former Director, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw

Oren Weinberg

Chief Executive Officer, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem

Moderated by Paul Salmons

Public historian and independent curator, London

SESSION THREE, FEATURED CONVERSATION:
Preserving History, Providing Information, Supporting Democracy: Exploring the Unique Roles of American Institutions
2:30PM ET
Hon. Dr. Carla Hayden

Librarian of Congress

Hon. David S. Ferriero

Archivist of the United States

SESSION FOUR, PANEL DISCUSSION:
Holocaust Remembrance and the Study of Antisemitism: The Power and Potential of Public Dialogue
3:15PM ET
Susan Abrams

CEO, Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center

Father Patrick Desbois

President, Yahad-In Unum

Mary Pat Higgins

President & CEO, Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum

Tali Nates

Founder and Director, Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre

Dr. Toby Simpson

Director, The Wiener Holocaust Library, London

Moderated by Dr. Stephen D. Smith

Viterbi Endowed Executive Director, USC Shoah Foundation

SESSION FIVE, CONVERSATION:
Antisemitism is Everyone’s Problem: Considering the Dangers Antisemitism Poses to Free Societies
4:00PM ET
Dr. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

University Professor Emerita, NYU
Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw

Dr. Timothy Snyder

Richard C. Levin Professor of History and Fortunoff Archive Faculty Advisor, Yale University
Permanent Fellow, Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna

SESSION SIX, PANEL DISCUSSION:
Strategies for Confronting Antisemitism: Informing and Empowering Students, Teachers, and Members of the Public
4:30PM ET
Dr. Kirsten Fermaglich

Professor of History and Jewish Studies, Michigan State University

Dr. David Frey

Professor of History & Director, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, United States Military Academy at West Point

Dr. Tony Michels

George L. Mosse Professor of American Jewish History, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Dr. Magda Teter

Professor of History and Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies, Fordham University

Moderated by Dr. Jeffrey Veidlinger

Joseph Brodsky Collegiate Professor of History and Judaic Studies, University of Michigan

SESSION SEVEN, FEATURED CONVERSATION
The Evolution of Understanding: Universities and the Fight Against Antisemitism
5:15PM ET
Dr. Lawrence S. Bacow

President, Harvard University

Christopher L. Eisgruber

President, Princeton University

Moderated by Dara Horn

Author

CLOSING REMARKS
6:00PM ET
Bernard J. Michael

President & CEO, Center for Jewish History



WORKSHOP
Understanding Jewish Life, Resilience, and Resistance in the Face of Persecution
Gemma R. Birnbaum

Executive Director, American Jewish Historical Society

Shulamith Z. Berger

Curator of Special Collections, Yeshiva University Museum

Jonathan Brent

Executive Director, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

Jason Guberman

Executive Director, American Sephardi Federation

William Weitzer

Executive Director, Leo Baeck Institute

Moderated by Bernard J. Michael

President & CEO, Center for Jewish History

Speakers

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Susan Abrams

CEO, Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center

Under Susan’s stewardship as CEO, the Museum has become a global leader in connecting the history and lessons of the Holocaust to the present day, equipping audiences with the knowledge, skills, and courage to take a stand for humanity. The Museum has used breakthrough technology, including interactive holograms and virtual reality film experiences, to change the trajectory of Holocaust memory and education and was awarded the National Medal by the Institute of Museum & Library Services, the highest honor for a museum. Susan believes that powerful storytelling combined with interactive technology turns the lessons of history into experiences that build empathy, a quality vital to standing up against injustice. Susan is an award-winning producer of films and exhibitions, and the author of The New Success Rules for Women (Random House, 2000). Abrams also has held leadership positions at Northwestern University, Chicago Children’s Museum and JCC Chicago and worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company and an Analyst at Goldman Sachs. She has an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and a BSE from the Wharton School and a BA from the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Dr. Lawrence S. Bacow

President, Harvard University

Lawrence S. Bacow is the 29th President of Harvard University.

Bacow was the Hauser Leader-in-Residence at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Center for Public Leadership and served as a member of the Harvard Corporation, the university’s principal governing board. One of the most widely experienced leaders in American higher education, known for his commitment to expanding student opportunity, catalyzing academic innovation, and encouraging universities’ civic engagement and service to society, Bacow is the former President of Tufts University and past Chancellor and Chair of the Faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As President of Tufts from 2001 to 2011, Bacow advanced the university’s commitment to excellence in teaching, research, and public service and fostered collaboration across the university’s eight schools. Under his leadership, Tufts pursued initiatives to enhance the undergraduate experience, deepen graduate and professional education and research in critical fields, broaden international engagement, and promote active citizenship among members of the university community.

While at Tufts, Bacow emerged as a nationally recognized champion of expanding access to higher education through need-based student aid, while also advocating vigorously for federal support of university-based research. He worked to engender novel connections across academic disciplines and among Tufts’ wide array of schools and helped craft a new partnership between the university and its principal teaching hospital, Tufts Medical Center. Bacow convened an international conference of higher education leaders in 2005 to initiate the Talloires Network, a global association of colleges and universities committed to strengthening the civic roles and social responsibilities of higher education. He launched Tufts’ Office of Institutional Diversity and highlighted inclusion as a cornerstone of the university’s excellence. He also strengthened relations between Tufts and its host communities and expanded outreach to alumni, parents, and friends. While guiding Tufts through the global financial crisis of 2008-09 and its aftermath, he brought to fruition the most ambitious fundraising campaign in the university’s history.

Before his time at Tufts, Bacow spent 24 years on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he held the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professorship of Environmental Studies. He served as the elected Chair of the Faculty (1995-97) and then as Chancellor (1998- 2001), one of the institute’s most senior academic officers. As Chancellor, he guided the institute’s efforts in undergraduate education, graduate education, research initiatives, international and industrial partnerships, and strategic planning, while playing an integral role in reviewing faculty appointments and promotions across MIT. Early in his career, he held visiting professorships at universities in Israel, Italy, Chile, and the Netherlands.

With academic interests that range across environmental policy, bargaining and negotiation, economics, law, and public policy, Bacow emerged as a widely recognized expert on non- adjudicatory approaches to the resolution of environmental disputes. He was co-director of MIT’s Consortium on Global Environmental Challenges and played a key role in launching and leading both the MIT Center for Environmental Initiatives and the MIT Center for Real Estate. He was also associated with the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. He is the author or co-author of four books and numerous scholarly articles on topics related to environmental policy, economics, land use law, negotiation, and occupational health and safety. At Tufts, he held faculty appointments in five academic departments: Urban and Environmental Policy, Economics, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Public Health, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

In recent years, he has turned his scholarly focus to higher education and leadership. From 2011 to 2014, he served as President-in-Residence in the Higher Education Program at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Since 2014, he has served as the Hauser Leader-in-Residence at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Center for Public Leadership. He has devoted his time to advising many new and aspiring higher education leaders, mentoring students interested in careers in education, teaching in executive education programs, and writing and speaking on salient topics in higher education – innovations in learning, academic freedom, the economics of universities, the impact of digital technologies, and university governance and leadership, among others.

Bacow is a senior advisor to Ithaka S+R, a nonprofit organization devoted to innovation in higher education, and was one of the authors of its major 2012 study of online learning systems in U.S. higher education. He has recently served as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Lincoln Project on preserving and strengthening the nation’s public research universities (2014-16), as well as the White House Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (2010-15). In 2017, he was Clark Kerr Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he has received six honorary degrees.

While president of Tufts, Bacow served as chair of the council of presidents of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, chair of the executive committee of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts, and a member of the executive committee of the American Council of Education’s board of directors.

Since July 2011, Bacow has served as a member of the Harvard Corporation, the university’s principal governing board. He chairs the Corporation’s finance committee and is past chair of both the Corporation’s committee on facilities and capital planning and the governing boards’ joint committee on inspection.

Bacow was raised in Pontiac, Michigan, by parents who were both immigrants, and whom he saw as embodiments of the American dream. Interested in math and science from an early age, he attended college at MIT, where he received his S.B. in economics and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He went on to earn three degrees from Harvard: a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an M.P.P. from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a Ph.D. in public policy from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Bacow is an avid runner, sailor, and skier. He launched the President’s Marathon Challenge at Tufts to raise funds in support of health and nutrition research, and he has completed five marathons. He was a member of the varsity sailing team at MIT, and the Sailing Pavilion at Tufts is named for him and his wife, Adele Fleet Bacow, an urban planner and graduate of Wellesley College and MIT. He met Adele on his first day of orientation at Harvard Law School. In 2012, Tufts recognized her with the Hosea Ballou Medal, an honor bestowed only 17 times since 1939 for exceptional service to the university. The Bacows have two sons.

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Dr. Peter Baldwin

Chairman of the Board of Directors, Center for Jewish History; Professor of History, UCLA

Peter Baldwin is chair of the Board of the Center for Jewish History, professor of history at UCLA, and Global Distinguished Professor at NYU. He is the author of several books on European and US history, most recently Fighting the First Wave: Why the Coronavirus Was Tackled so Differently across the Globe (2021) and Command and Persuade: Crime, Law, and the State across History (2021).

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Father Patrick Desbois

President, Yahad-In Unum

Father Patrick Desbois is the President of the international organization Yahad-In Unum which, for the past 15 years, has interviewed over 7,000 eyewitnesses of the execution of Jews and Romas’ perpetrated by Nazi units, and has identified more than 2,907 execution sites in Eastern Europe. He was also, from 2001 to 2016, the Director of the National Service for relations with Judaism, under the auspices of the French Conference of Bishops and from 2003 to 2019, consultant to the Holy See Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism.  In addition to conducting research on the victims of the Holocaust, Father Desbois has devoted his life to fighting against anti-Semitism and all forms of mass violence.

He recounts his experience of this research in the book The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest's Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews, winner of the 2008 National Jewish Book Award. "The Hidden Holocaust", a first 60 Minutes segment featuring Yahad-In Unum and Father Desbois's work was launched in October 2015.   

Father Patrick Desbois’ research results have been taught at the University level at the Sorbonne University in Paris and at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., where he is Professor. Father Desbois was honored with the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur by former French President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2008. Former French President, François Hollande, congratulated Father Desbois’ work when he was given the CRIF Award “in recognition of his commitment to the truth” in March 2014.

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Christopher L. Eisgruber

President, Princeton University

Christopher Ludwig Eisgruber has served as Princeton University’s 20th president since July 2013. He served previously as Princeton's provost for nine years, beginning in 2004, after joining the Princeton faculty in 2001.

As president, Eisgruber has led efforts to increase the representation of low-income and first-generation students at Princeton and other colleges and universities. Princeton’s socioeconomic diversity initiatives have attracted national attention from The New York Times, The Washington Post, 60 Minutes and other news outlets. Eisgruber has also been a leading voice in Washington and elsewhere for the value of research and liberal arts education. He has emphasized the importance of both free speech and inclusivity to Princeton’s mission; championed the University’s commitment to service; and launched initiatives designed to fortify Princeton’s connections to the innovation ecosystem in New Jersey and beyond.

Eisgruber received his A.B. in physics from Princeton in 1983, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He then earned an M.Litt in politics at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and a J.D. cum laude at the University of Chicago Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the law review. After clerking for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Patrick Higginbotham and U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, he taught at New York University's School of Law for 11 years. In 2001, Eisgruber joined the Princeton faculty as the director of the Program in Law and Public Affairs and the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the University Center for Human Values. He directed Princeton's Program in Law and Public Affairs from 2001 to 2004. Eisgruber was named Princeton's 11th provost in 2004 and in that capacity was the University's second-ranking official and its chief academic and budgetary officer.

A renowned constitutional scholar, Eisgruber has published numerous articles on constitutional issues and testified multiple times before legislative bodies on the issue of religious freedom. His books include Constitutional Self-Government (2001); Religious Freedom and the Constitution (with Lawrence Sager, 2007); and The Next Justice: Repairing the Supreme Court Appointments Process (2007).

In 2014, Eisgruber was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh in 2015 and was elected an honorary fellow of University College, Oxford, in 2017. He is also a steering committee member of the American Talent Initiative and a member of the Global University Leaders Forum of the World Economic Forum.

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Dr. Kirsten Fermaglich

Professor of History and Jewish Studies, Michigan State University

Kirsten Fermaglich is Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Michigan State University.  Her most recent book, A Rosenberg By Any Other Name:  A History of Jewish Name Changing in America (NYU, 2018) was awarded the Saul Viener Book Prize by the American Jewish Historical Society in June 2019.  Fermaglich is also the author of American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares: Early Holocaust Consciousness and Liberal America, 1957-1965 (Brandeis University Press, 2006) and the co-editor of the Norton Critical Edition of Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (2013), with Lisa Fine.  She is currently co-editor of the journal, American Jewish History, along with Daniel Soyer and Adam Mendelsohn.  Fermaglich has published articles on antisemitism at Michigan State University in the 1930s and in the United States in the 1940s, and in 2001-2003, she worked as a curator for the MSU museum exhibit, “Uneasy Years:  Michigan Jewry in Depression and War.”  Her current research focuses on the migration of Jewish academics to college towns throughout the South and Midwest in the years after World War II.

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Hon. David S. Ferriero

Archivist of the United States

David S. Ferriero was confirmed as 10th Archivist of the United States on November 6, 2009. Created in 1934, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is responsible for preserving and providing access to the records of the U.S. Government. NARA has 44 facilities across the country, including 14 Presidential Libraries, containing approximately 15 billion pages of textual records; 44 million photographs; miles and miles of film and video, and an ever increasing number of electronic records.

Previously, Mr. Ferriero served as the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries and held top library positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Duke University. 

Mr. Ferriero earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English literature from Northeastern University and a master’s degree from the Simmons College of Library and Information Science. Mr. Ferriero served as a Navy hospital corpsman in Vietnam.

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Dr. David Frey

Professor of History & Director, Center Holocaust and Genocide Studies, United States Military Academy at West Point

Dr. David Frey is Professor of History and Founding Director of the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies (CHGS) at the US Military Academy at West Point. As CHGS Director, Dr. Frey oversees a comprehensive atrocity studies program and has spearheaded efforts to increase Defense Department understanding of, research into, and efforts to prevent mass atrocity. He is currently the 2021-22 William J. Lowenberg Memorial Fellow on America, the Holocaust, and the Jews at the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) researching World War II era “marginal soldiers.” These include Jewish refugees who joined the US Army military intelligence and contributed to reshaping concepts of American citizenship and belonging. Author of Jews, Nazis, and the Cinema of Hungary: The Tragedy of Success, 1929-44 (IB Tauris, 2017; winner, 2019 biennial Hungarian Studies Association Book Award), co-author of Ordinary Soldiers: A Study in Law, Ethics and Leadership (USHMM, 2014), and co-author of Least-Worst Decisions: The Leadership of LTG Roméo Dallaire during the Rwandan Genocide (forthcoming), he taught at Columbia University after earning his Ph.D. in Central European History there. He serves on the USHMM’s Education Committee and the executive committee of the Consortium of Higher Education Centers of Holocaust, Genocide, & Human Rights Studies.

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Michael S. Glickman

Founder & CEO, jMUSE

Michael S. Glickman is a social entrepreneur, philanthropic advisor and prolific fundraiser who has helped to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in philanthropy for arts and culture, and educational causes over the past two decades. He is Founder & CEO of jMUSE, a venture in arts and culture philanthropy that brings together institutions, experts, and philanthropists to experiment with new ways to cultivate important ideas and innovative content across the United States and Europe. Glickman serves as an advisor to a number of nonprofit organizations and executives. Prior to founding jMUSE, Glickman served as President & CEO of New York's Holocaust Museum (Museum of Jewish Heritage), led the Center for Jewish History, and served as vice president at Long Island University.

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Hon. Dr. Carla Hayden

Librarian of Congress

Carla Hayden was sworn in as the 14th Librarian of Congress on September 14, 2016. Hayden, the first woman and the first African American to lead the national library, was nominated to the position by President Barack Obama on February 24, 2016, and her nomination was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on July 13.

Prior to her latest post she served, since 1993, as CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland. Hayden was nominated by President Obama to be a member of the National Museum and Library Services Board in January 2010 and was confirmed to that post by the Senate in June 2010. Prior to joining the Pratt Library, Hayden was deputy commissioner and chief librarian of the Chicago Public Library from 1991 to 1993. She was an assistant professor for Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh from 1987 to 1991. Hayden was library services coordinator for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago from 1982 to 1987. She began her career with the Chicago Public Library as the young adult services coordinator from 1979 to 1982 and as a library associate and children’s librarian from 1973 to 1979.

Hayden was president of the American Library Association from 2003 to 2004. In 1995, she was the first African American to receive Library Journal’s Librarian of the Year Award in recognition of her outreach services at the Pratt Library, which included an after-school center for Baltimore teens offering homework assistance and college and career counseling. Hayden received a B.A. from Roosevelt University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Graduate Library School of the University of Chicago.

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Mary Pat Higgins

President & CEO, Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum

As President and CEO of the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, Mary Pat Higgins leads the Museum in its mission to teach the history of the Holocaust and advance human rights to combat prejudice, hatred and indifference. Under Mary Pat’s leadership, the Museum opened a new state-of-the-art facility on September 18, 2019, accommodating an expanded core exhibit focused the Holocaust, other genocides, and human and civil rights in the United States.

Prior to joining the Museum, Mary Pat was the Associate Head and CFO of The Hockaday School. She is a CPA and has an MBA. She is also active in the greater community of Dallas, serving on the Boards of VisitDallas, Ursuline Academy of Dallas, and North Dallas Bank & Trust, and she is a member of Dallas Assembly.

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Dara Horn

Author

Dara Horn is the author of six books, including five novels and the new essay collection People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present, and the creator and host of the podcast Adventures with Dead Jews. Horn received her doctorate in comparative literature from Harvard University, specializing in Hebrew and Yiddish, and she has taught these subjects at Sarah Lawrence College and Yeshiva University, as well as at Harvard University through the Gerald Weinstock Visiting Professorship in Jewish Studies. One of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists and a two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award, Horn has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the AtlanticSmithsonianTabletJewish Review of Books, and many other publications. She has lectured at hundreds of universities and cultural institutions throughout North America, Israel and Australia. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and four children.

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Dr. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

University Professor Emerita, NYU
Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is Professor Emerita at New York University and Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, in Warsaw. Her books include Image before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864–1939 (with Lucjan Dobroszycki); They Called Me Mayer July: Painted and Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust (with Mayer Kirshenblatt); and Anne Frank Unbound: Media, Imagination, Memory, (with Jeffrey Shandler).

She was honored for lifetime achievement by the Foundation for Jewish Culture, received honorary doctorates from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, University of Haifa, and Indiana University, the 2015 Marshall Sklare Award for her contribution to the social scientific study of Jewry, and was decorated with the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and awarded the Dan David Prize. She serves on Advisory Boards for the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Council of American Jewish Museums, Jewish Museum Vienna, Jewish Museum Berlin, and the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow. She also advises on museum and exhibition projects in Lithuania, Belarus, Albania, Israel, New Zealand, and the United States.

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Ronald Leopold

Executive Director, Anne Frank House, Amsterdam

Ronald Leopold was born in 1960 in Groningen in the north of the Netherlands. From 1978 to 1985 he studied history at the University of Groningen, and during his studies he lived for two years in Budapest, where met his wife. Since 1985 he has lived in Amsterdam together with his wife and daughter. After his studies, he held a variety of posts at the General Pension Fund for Public Employees, where among other things he was involved with the implementation of legislation affecting war victims. In 1990 he moved to the Pensions and Benefits Council, which he directed from 2006. Ronald Leopold has been the Executive Director of the Anne Frank House since 1 January 2011.

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Dr. Tony Michels

George L. Mosse Professor of American Jewish History, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Tony Michels is the George L. Mosse Professor of American Jewish History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of a Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York, editor of Jewish Radicals: A Documentary History and co-editor of The Cambridge History of Judaism. Volume Eight: The Modern World, 1815-2000. His essays and reviews have appeared in Guilt & Pleasure Quarterly, Forward, Meatpaper, Marginalia Review, Heckler, and other publications.

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Dr. Louise Mirrer

President & CEO, New-York Historical Society

Louise Mirrer is President & CEO of the New-York Historical Society.  Under her leadership, New-York Historical has become a center for public engagement in, and enjoyment of history and art, with a half million visitors annually onsite, and several million visitors online.  Dr. Mirrer has led her institution in two major capital campaigns, raising a total of $135 million to support building renovations and increase endowment size. In her previous role as Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost for the City University of New York system, she spearheaded a hiring initiative in American history at CUNY’s undergraduate colleges, and introduced American history as a requirement for CUNY undergraduates. She is the author of four books and numerous articles, most recently Women, Muslims, and Jews in the Texts of Medieval Castile (University of Michigan Press). She holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford, a graduate Diploma from Cambridge University, and a B.A. magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania.  She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, was awarded the Officer’s Cross in the Order of Civil Merit by the Spanish Crown in 2017, and inducted into the Crain's New York Business Hall of Fame in 2018.

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Tali Nates

Founder and Director, Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre

Tali Nates is the founder and director of the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre and chair of the South African Holocaust & Genocide Foundation. She is a historian who lectures internationally on Holocaust education, genocide prevention, reconciliation and human rights. Tali has presented at numerous international conferences including at the United Nations (2016 & 2020).  She published articles and contributed chapters to many books, among them God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors (2015), Remembering The Holocaust in Educational Settings (2018) and Conceptualizing Mass Violence, Representations, Recollections, and Reinterpretations (2021).In 2010, Tali was chosen as one of the top 100 newsworthy and noteworthy women in South Africa, by the Mail & Guardian. She won many awards including the Kia Community Service Award (South Africa, 2015) and the Agit Gratias Award (2020, Czech Republic). Tali serves on the Academic Advisory Group of the School of Social and Health Sciences, Monash University (IIEMSA), South Africa. She was one of the founders of the Holocaust and Tutsi Genocide Survivors groups in Johannesburg. Born to a family of Holocaust survivors, her father and uncle were saved by Oskar Schindler. The rest of the family was murdered.

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Paul Salmons

Public historian and independent curator, London

Paul Salmons is an independent curator and education consultant specializing in “difficult histories”. His work includes the international-award winning Auschwitz Not long ago Not far away, a major travelling exhibition produced by Spanish company Musealia, which presents some 700 original artefacts to new audiences in Europe and North America.

He is also Chief Curator of the exhibition, Seeing Auschwitz produced by Musealia for UNESCO and the United Nations. This powerful exhibit re-examines iconic photographs of the largest killing center in human history, challenging us to think again about what each one really reveals about that place and time.

Paul worked for ten years at the Imperial War Museum in London, helping to create the United Kingdom’s national exhibition on the Holocaust and developing its distinctive educational approach. He was a founding Director of the Centre for Holocaust Education at University College London; served on the United Kingdom delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance for some 20 years; and has consulted on numerous international projects including – currently – for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as their first Leslie and Susan Gonda (Goldschmied) Foundation Fellow.

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Sir Simon Schama

University Professor of History and Art History, Columbia University

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History. He taught history at Cambridge (Christ's College), (1966-76) Oxford (Brasenose College) (1976-1980) and art history and history at Harvard (1980-1993) before coming to Columbia. He has also taught at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and has delivered the George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures at Cambridge, the Tanner Lectures (at both Harvard: "Random Access Memory" and Oxford: "Rembrandt and Rubens"), the Finzi-Contini Lecture at Yale on the epic tradition in English history, and the Andrew Mellon Lectures on the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington on "Really Old Masters: Late Style from Titian to de Kooning."

His books have been translated into fifteen languages and include Patriots and Libeators: Revolution and Government in the Netherlands 1780-1813 (1977); Two Rothschilds and the Land of Israel (1979);The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (1987); Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (1989); Landscape and Memory (1995); Rembrandt's Eyes (1999); the History of Britain trilogy (2000-2002); Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution (2006); and The Power of Art (2007). In 1991 he published the twinned novellas, Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations.

His books have won the Wolfson Award for History, the W.H Smith Prize for Literature, the National Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and most recently for Rough Crossings the National Book Critics' Circle Award for Non-Fiction (2007). He has been an essayist and critic for The New Yorker since 1994, his art criticism winning the National Magazine Award in 1996. His art essays have also been collected and published as Hang-Ups, Essays on Painting (Mostly).

His television work for the BBC and PBS as writer-presenter includes two films on Rembrandt; a five part series based on Landscape and Memory; the award-winning, Emmy-nominated "A History of Britain"; a film on Tolstoy; a ninety minute adaptation of Rough Crossings; and most recently the eight part series "The Power of Art." A stage version of Rough Crossings for Headlong Theatre, written by Caryl Phillips and directed by Rupert Goold, opened in London at the end of September 2007.  His work on a four part series for BBC and PBS, "The American Future: A History" aired around the presidential election of 2008.

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Dr. Toby Simpson

Director, The Wiener Holocaust Library, London

Dr Toby Simpson is Director of The Wiener Holocaust Library, the world’s oldest archival and library collection relating to the Holocaust and Nazi era. He recently led the project Testifying to the Truth: Eyewitnesses to the Holocaust which has catalogued, digitised and translated over 1,000 eyewitness accounts gathered by the Library between 1954 and 1961. Dr Simpson joined the Library in 2011, setting up a new programme of exhibitions, tours and events. Between 2011 and 2016, he curated or co-curated over a dozen exhibitions for the Library including Humanity After the Holocaust: The Jewish Relief Unit, 1943-1950, and Four Thousand Lives: The Kitchener Camp Rescue.

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Dr. Stephen D. Smith

Viterbi Endowed Executive Director, USC Shoah Foundation

Dr. Stephen D. Smith is the Finci -Viterbi Executive Director of USC Shoah Foundation, and holds the UNESCO Chair on Genocide Education.

Smith founded the UK Holocaust Centre in Nottinghamshire, England and cofounded the Aegis Trust for the prevention of crimes against humanity and genocide.

Smith has served as a producer on a number of film and new media projects, including Dimensions in Testimony, and the VR project The Last Goodbye.

In recognition of his work, Smith has become a member of the Order of the British Empire and received the Interfaith Gold Medallion. He also holds two honorary doctorates, and lectures widely on issues relating to the history and collective response to the Holocaust, genocide, and crimes against humanity.

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Dr. Timothy Snyder

Richard C. Levin Professor of History and Fortunoff Archive Faculty Advisor, Yale University
Permanent Fellow, Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna

Professor Timothy Snyder was educated at Brown and Oxford and held postdocs at Harvard before joining Yale University’s faculty, where he is the Levin Professor of History and Public Affairs. His historical work concerns central and eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust. He has also written on U.S. history, international relations, health care, digital politics, and political thought. His fifteen books, which include Bloodlands and Black Earth, have been translated into more than forty languages and have received a similar number of awards. He holds state orders and honorary doctorates, and has appeared in documentaries, on television, and in films. His writing has inspired poster exhibitions, sculpture, a punk rock song, a rap song, films, a play, and an opera. His pamphlet On Tyranny is quoted in demonstrations around the world. In 2021, he introduced the terms “big lie” and “memory laws” into the American political and legal discussion. He is finishing a philosophical book about freedom.

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Dr. Dariusz Stola

Professor of History, Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Former Director, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw

Professor Dariusz Stola is a historian at the Institute for Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences. He has published ten books and more than 150 articles on the history of Polish-Jewish relations, the communist regime in Poland and international migrations in the 20th century, including: Nadzieja i Zagłada (Hope and the Holocaust, 1995); Kampania antysyjonistyczna w Polsce 1967-1968 (The Anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland, 1967-1968, 2000); Kraj bez wyjścia? Migracje z Polski 1949-1989 (A Country with No Exit? Migrations from Poland, 1949-1989, 2010); Patterns of Migration in Central Europe (2001, co-edited with C. Wallace); PZPR jako machina władzy (Polish United Workers Party as a ruling machine, 2012, co-edited with K. Persak). His books have received several awards, while he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta and the Medal of the University of Warsaw. He serves at the Polish Academy of Sciences’ Committee on History and Committee on Migration Research, as well as at advisory boards of several Polish and international institutions and journals. In 2014-2019 has was the director of the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

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Dr. Magda Teter

Professor of History and Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies, Fordham University

Magda Teter is Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University. She is the author of Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland (Cambridge, 2005), Sinners on Trial (Harvard, 2011), which was a finalist for the Jordan Schnitzer Prize, Blood Libel: On the Trail of An Antisemitic Myth (Harvard, 2020), which won the 2020 National Jewish Book Award, and of many articles in English, Hebrew, Italian, and Polish. Teter’s work has been supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She has served as the co-editor of the AJS Review and as the Vice-President for Publications of the Association for Jewish Studies. In 2020-2021, Teter was the NEH Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for Jewish History.

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Dr. Jeffrey Veidlinger

Joseph Brodsky Collegiate Professor of History and Judaic Studies, University of Michigan

Jeffrey Veidlinger is Joseph Brodsky Collegiate Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. Professor Veidlinger is the author of the forthcoming In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust, and the award-winning books, In the Shadow of the Shtetl: Small-Town Jewish Life in Soviet UkraineThe Moscow State Yiddish Theater: Jewish Culture on the Soviet Stage, and Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire. Veidlinger is the chair of the Academic Advisory Council of the Center for Jewish History, a member of the Executive Committee of the American Academy for Jewish Research, a member of the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and a former vice-president of the Association for Jewish Studies. His work has been supported by grants and fellowships from numerous agencies, including the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

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Oren Weinberg

Chief Executive Officer, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem

Oren Weinberg has served as the Chief Executive Officer of the National Library of Israel (NLI) since 2010, leading the Library through a process of transformative renewal, driven by the principles of opening access and encouraging meaningful engagement with NLI's treasures of Israeli and Jewish culture as never before. The Library’s renewal is taking place through a range of innovative and meaningful educational, cultural, and digital initiatives, and it will reach new heights with completion of the iconic new National Library of Israel building, currently under construction adjacent to the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) in Jerusalem.

Mr. Weinberg was the Director of the University of Haifa Library from 2004-2010, prior to which he served in a number of managerial positions at the University of Haifa Library from 1993-2004. He holds a BA in Art History and General Studies from the University of Haifa and an MA in Library and Information Studies from Bar-Ilan University.






This program is funded, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.