March 16, 2009

Leading Holocaust historian and scholar to deliver lecture

Clark University's Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies will present a free, public lecture, "Holocaust and Genocide: Two Concepts or Part of Each Other?" by Professor Yehuda Bauer, one of the world's foremost experts on the Holocaust, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 23, in Tilton Hall, 2nd floor of Clark University's Higgins University Center, 950 Main Street, Worcester.

Bauer will explore the view of the Holocaust as possibly the most extreme form of genocide, and he will assess comparisons between the Holocaust and recent genocidal situations. Bauer is Professor Emeritus of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Academic Advisor to Yad Vashem, and a member of the Israel Academy of Science. He is also the Honorary Chairman of the International Task Force on Holocaust Education. He has authored 14 books and some 90 articles on the Holocaust.

Bauer's talk serves as the keynote address at the first-ever International Graduate Students' Conference. The conference was collectively envisioned by the Center's Ph.D. candidates to provide a forum for students from around the globe to present original research on the Holocaust and other genocides to an audience of peers and scholars. Their purpose is to foster an international community of future scholars.

The conference also celebrates the centennial of Sigmund Freud's visit to Clark University, the sole American University where he lectured. Freud, who famously escaped Nazi persecution, delivered five lectures at Clark as part of a series that recognized the University's twentieth anniversary of graduate education. The doctoral conference honors Freud's visit and marks the Strassler Center's 10-year anniversary of offering doctoral education.

The mission of the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies reaches beyond the boundaries of the University: to educate professionals of many fields about genocides and the Holocaust; to provide a lecture series free of charge and open to the public; to use scholarship to address current problems stemming from the murderous past; and to participate in the public discussion about a host of issues ranging from the importance of intervention in genocidal situations today to the significance of state-sponsored denial of the Armenian genocide and the well-funded denial of the Holocaust.

Dedicated to teaching, research, and public service, the Center trains the next cadre of Holocaust historians and genocide studies scholars of the future, teachers, Holocaust museum directors and curators, and experts in non-governmental organizations and government agencies. The establishment of this Ph.D. program has been acclaimed by experts in the field as the most decisive step to date in furthering scholarship about the Holocaust and other genocides, particularly the Armenian Genocide.

For more information about the lecture and the conference, call 508-793-8897.