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30 Jan 2023
Debórah Dwork, Director of the Center, was honored to deliver the keynote address at the United Nations Holocaust Memorial Ceremony.

Held in the General Assembly Hall on 27 January 2023, the ceremony marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Photo credit: Laurie Asch
Center Director Debórah Dwork’s speech starts at 1:10

28 Dec 2022
Open Letter on Iran from Mohammad Hans Jazayeri

Please read the open letter of which the Center is a signatory.
You can read the open letter by following the link.

25 May 2022
Review of Center Advisory Board Member Prof. Elissa Bemporad’s Recent and Very Relevant Book

“The war in Ukraine has simultaneously forced to the surface and upended the memory of a history that had fallen into oblivion. The past, we see once more, can be reinvented and reinterpreted. . . . Three recent books excavate this century-old story and shine light on its lasting importance. Elissa Bemporad’s Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets looks at the memory and consequences of this violence in the Soviet Union. . . . read more.


14 May 2022
Center Director Debórah Dwork Honored with Annetje Fels-Kupferschmidt Award

Center Director Debórah Dwork was honored to receive the Annetje Fels-Kupferschmidt (AFK) Award, in Amsterdam on 3 May 2022.   Bestowed by the Dutch Auschwitz Committee in recognition of her “pioneering work on and in the field of Holocaust Studies” which “has shaped new generations of scholars, teachers, activists, museum curators, and policy-makers,” the AFK Award is granted annually. Dwork, the 18th recipient, was celebrated for “combining erudition with a strong moral fiber, and advancing research, remembrance, advocacy, and public education on the Holocaust and Genocide Studies for decades and generations to come.” Most particularly, Dwork was lauded “for envisioning and then forging a fundamental road that did not exist — and now does — because of you.”

Jacques Grishaver, Debórah Dwork, and Marianne de Roos-Norden

April 07, 2022
The Center Condemns Russia’s Genocidal Rhetoric, Genocidal Intentions, and Genocidal Acts

The Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at the Graduate Center—CUNY condemns the massacres of civilians carried out by Russian troops in the occupied territories of Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion. Abundant evidence proves that the massacres are not isolated and exceptional phenomena: together with indiscriminate destruction of civilian infrastructure, looting, and deportations, these massacres are the result of a strategic campaign to eliminate Ukraine’s existence. Statements by public figures and analysts broadcast by Russian state-run media outlets explicitly advocate for de-ukrainization, and for the elimination of the Ukrainian people, thus openly espousing genocidal rhetoric and promoting genocidal intention. We urge the international community to respond to this escalation from war crimes to genocide by increasing humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine and enforcing an embargo on Russian oil and gas. 

Debórah Dwork, Center Director

Center Advisory Board:

Elissa Bemporad, Ungar Chair in East European Jewish History and the Holocaust, Professor, Department of History, Queens College, and Graduate Center-CUNY

Francesca Bregoli, Joseph and Oro Halegua Chair in Greek and Sephardic Jewish Studies, Associate Professor, Department of History, Queens College, and Graduate Center-CUNY

Benjamin Carter Hett, Professor, Department of History, Hunter College and Graduate Center-CUNY

Eli Karetny, Deputy Director, Ralph Bunche Institute 

Steven P. Remy, Professor, Department of History, Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center-CUNY 

Victoria Sanford, Professor of Anthropology, Lehman College; Founding Director, Center for Human Rights & Peace Studies; Doctoral Faculty, Department of Anthropology, Graduate Center-CUNY

John Torpey, Presidential Professor of Sociology and History, Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, Graduate Center-CUNY

February 25, 2022
Statement on Ukraine

The Center Advisory Board condemns Russia’s military assault on Ukraine and President Putin’s use of historical distortions and cynical lies to justify Russia’s attack on Ukrainian sovereignty. We stand with all the people of Ukraine and Russia who oppose this war.

 We call on leaders and citizens around the world to bring this war to an end, and to help those affected by it, first and foremost the people of Ukraine, whose lives and hopes for democratic self-governance have been upended by this vicious assault.




February 22, 2022
NPR Interviews Victoria Sanford

Center Advisory Board Member Victoria Sanford interviewed about Maya land rights and violence against Indigenous environmental activists  in a landmark Inter-American human rights case.



February 10, 2022
An Interview with Victoria Sanford

Center Advisory Board member Professor Victoria Sanford interviewed about a key Guatemalan land rights fight. Read on in Mongabay.



January 27, 2022
New work in Revista by Center Advisory Board Member Professor Victoria Sanford

Prof. Victoria Sanford has a new piece in Revista, Harvard Review of Latin America. The piece, “Friends Who Disappear: Reflecting in the Time of Covid-19,” is out today.

I first met Marvyn Perez in 1988 when I was teaching English in Mexico.  I was having dinner at the home of Guatemalan exiles, fellow instructors at the university in Puebla.  Marvyn must have been 18 or 19 years old, but looked much younger.  He was with his high school girlfriend from Los Angeles. Both were clad in jeans, T-shirts, and gold-rimmed glasses.  Though shy, Marvyn had an easy smile that seemed hopeful and expectant.  He was in Puebla to begin medical school.  It wasn’t until sometime later that I learned he was a torture survivor.

Continue Reading



January 18, 2022
New work by Center Advisory Board Member Professor Victoria Sanford

Center Advisory Board member Prof Victoria Sanford plumbs the texture of terror in her newly published piece, “We’ve Come for the Garbage.” Drawing on her extensive field research on the Guatemalan criminal justice system and its role in the maintenance of inequality, patriarchy, power, and impunity, Prof Sanford explores what it means to confront impunity and support human rights while living on the uncertain and hazy frontiers of life and death in 21st century Guatemala. 

https://www.twrjournal.com/poetry-victoria-sanford



November 18, 2021
New work by Center Advisory Board Member Professor Steven Remy

A new biographical encyclopedia of Adolf Hitler by Center Advisory Board member Professor Steven Remy, Adolf Hitler: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works, published by Rowman & Littlefield.

Cover of Remy’s latest work, Rowman & Littlefield, 2021.

Adolf Hitler was hardly the modern world’s only murderous tyrant and imperialist. Yet he and the regime he ruled over for 12 years exerted an enormous impact on the history of the 20th Century and we are still living with the consequences. Based on the most recent scholarship, Adolf Hitler: A Reference Guide is the first English-language biographical encyclopedia on Hitler. It captures his life and legacies and features a chronology, an introductory survey of his life, a dictionary section with entries on people, places, and events related to him, and a bibliography with written works and films by and about Hitler.”

Learn more




October 3, 2021
New York Times Guest Essay by Center Advisory Board Member, Professor Zachariah Mampilly, “Protests are Taking Over the World”

September was turbulent: More than 200 Australians arrested during citywide protests and a temporary no-fly zone declared over Melbourne. Rubber bullets and tear gas unleashed by the Thai riot police into an angry crowd. Health care workers assaulted in Canada. Rallies of up to 150,000 people across the Netherlands.

The pandemic has coincided with an upsurge in protests across the globe. Over the past 18 months, people have taken to the streets in IndiaYemenTunisiaEswatiniCubaColombiaBrazil and the United States. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project reports that the number of demonstrations globally increased by 7 percent from 2019 to 2020 despite government-mandated lockdowns and other measures designed to limit public gatherings.

What is driving this international discontent?

Source: The New York Times


September 27, 2021
An Interview with Victoria Sanford

Center Advisory Board member Professor Victoria Sanford interviewed by Julio Cisneros for PBS Arizona.

Guatemala’s genocide left over 200,000 people dead, 500,000 displaced, and 40,000 forced disappearances. The aftermath continues to affect thousands of survivors such as the Cumez family in Comalapa, Chimaltenango. They have suffered for decades waiting to find the remains of Felipe Pollon kidnapped 40 years ago by the Guatemalan army.


September 24, 2021
A New Book by Elissa Bemporad

A coedited volume by Center Advisory Board member Professor Elissa Bemporad, Pogroms: A Documentary History, published by Oxford University Press.  

Pograms: A Documentary History (OUP, 2021)

From the 1880s to the 1940s, an upsurge of explosive pogroms caused much pain and suffering across the eastern borderlands of Europe. Rioters attacked Jewish property and harmed men, women, and children. During World War I and the Russian Civil War, pogrom violence turned into full-blown military actions. In some cases, pogroms wiped entire Jewish communities out of existence. More generally, they were part of a larger story of destruction, ethnic purification, and coexistence that played out in the region over a span of some six decades. Pogroms: A Documentary History surveys the complex history of anti-Jewish violence by bringing together archival and published sources–many appearing for the first time in English translation. This landmark volume with its distinguished roster of scholars provides an unprecedented view of the history of pogroms.


August 22, 2021
In Support: Scholars at Risk (SAR) to Secretary of State Blinken


The Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity supports the following letter from Scholars at Risk to Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.  We post it here to highlight our endorsement.

The Honorable Antony J. Blinken
United States Secretary of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520
August 17, 2021

URGENT Re: Saving Afghanistan’s future

Dear Secretary Blinken:

Scholars at Risk, together with the undersigned higher education institutions, associations, networks, and professionals, request your immediate action to save Afghanistan’s scholars, students, practitioners, civil society leaders and activists, especially women and ethnic and religious minorities.

Scholars at Risk is an international network of over 500 other higher education institutions in 40 countries whose core mission is to protect threatened scholars and intellectuals, principally by arranging temporary positions at network-member institutions for those who are unable to work safely in their home countries. Over the last 20 years our network has assisted over 1500 threatened scholars, students and practitioners.

We are racing to offer assistance to colleagues in Afghanistan who at this moment are desperately seeking ways out of the country. Many have already moved into hiding and may soon take the perilous step of looking for a way over land borders. They may not have worn a uniform or received a US government paycheck, but for the better part of twenty years they have fought alongside US interests for a new, rights-respecting, forward-looking, knowledge-based Afghanistan. Hundreds of them traveled to the United States to seek an education and returned to their homeland, dedicated to values of openness, and tolerance. These are not the values of the Taliban, so their lives are now at risk. Timely US government action can still make an enormous difference, and maybe yet save Afghanistan’s future. We implore you to act on their behalf now.

Specifically, we seek immediate action from USDOS and relevant USG departments and agencies to:

• Continue evacuation flights for as long as possible so as to include scholars, students and civil society actors who have supported the forward-looking, pluralist vision of Afghanistan that the US mission embraced. Do not end flights until all are safely out.

• Include SIV, P1 and P2 candidates among those evacuated by US forces and their agents for relocation, temporarily to third countries at least, ideally for transit to the US as early as possible.

• Advise all US and ally embassies and consulates wherever they are located to receive and process SIV, P1, and P2 applications, as well as J and other appropriate visa applications, for Afghan nationals in their respective territory or for those still in Afghanistan, and facilitate entry to the US or a third country as rapidly as possible.

• Create a priority processing pathway for those candidates who demonstrate an existing partner, host institution, job, or sponsor, including for families, that would facilitate their arrival and earliest adjustment. Many US institutions and individuals are ready to help; capture that opportunity by expediting the processing of individuals known to them and for whom they are ready to step forward.

• As to scholars and researchers in particular, waive the intent-to-return and home residency requirements on US J visa applications for Afghan nationals for the foreseeable future. Barring full waiver, issue authoritative guidance to consular and border officials supporting a determination of satisfaction of the intent to return by showing a willingness to return in the absence of the Taliban, or a credible, durable and rebuttable demonstration that the individual would be able to return and live safely under the Taliban.

• Establish a dedicated funding stream for scholars, students, and civil society actors from Afghanistan, including men and especially women and ethnic and religious minorities, to undertake study, fellowships, lectureships, researcher positions or temporary academic positions at US higher education institutions, similar to the programs created during the Iraq conflict but on a much larger scale reflective of the much larger threat posed by the military withdrawal and subsequent collapse of the Afghan national government. Some funds for such streams might be redirected from existing funds budgeted for Afghanistan programming, but which may not be possible to expend under the current conditions. Nevertheless, new funds will be required to meet the most urgent needs.

We ask for a phone call with the appropriate officer at your earliest possible convenience to discuss the situation, the recommendations above and any possibilities for further action or support. The window in which to take these steps, save lives, and redeem some measure of the US investment in Afghanistan’s future is rapidly closing. Your urgent intervention is needed to mobilize the relevant departments and agencies.

The eroding situation in Afghanistan poses a threat not only to the lives of our colleagues still in Afghanistan, but to the future of that country, and to the future security and honor of the United States. The US higher education community is ready to do its part, but we need your help. If we move quickly, we can go a long way towards mitigating the worst of the threats and demonstrate continuing commitment to the future of Afghanistan and its people.

Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to your urgent reply. Your staff may reach me anytime at rquinn@nyu.edu or +1-917-710-1946.

Sincerely,
Robert Quinn
Executive Director


July 1, 2021
In Memoriam: Founding Center Advisory Board Member, Prof. Eric Weitz

It is with great sadness that I report the death on July 1, 2021 of founding Center Advisory Board member, Eric Weitz. An outstanding scholar and committed educator, Eric brought wisdom and insight to matters large and small.  He was our colleague, and he was our friend. We miss him.

Eric’s (former) doctoral student, Prof. Sarah K. Danielsson, honored her mentor with the following obituary, published in the Journal of Genocide Research. 
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2021.1958735

Debórah Dwork
Director

Eric D. Weitz

On 1 July 2021, Eric Weitz passed away after a battle with cancer. He was 68 years old. The fields of genocide studies and human rights have lost one of its most influential thinkers and prolific authors.

Eric grew up in the Bayside section of Queens, New York. He studied history at SUNY Binghamton, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1974. He received his MA (1976) and his PhD in history at Boston University in 1983 under the supervision of his subsequent longtime friend and colleague, Norman Naimark. During his graduate studies, he specialized in German and Soviet history, and spent a year at Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, studying with Hans Mommsen. In 1985, he commenced an assistant professorship at St. Olaf’s College in Minnesota, where he stayed until 1999 when he was hired by the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Two years later, he became the Asham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair in the College of Liberal Arts, and in 2007, he was awarded the prestigious Distinguished McKnight University Professorship of the University of Minnesota.

In 2012, he returned “home”: to the City College of New York. He often spoke of his childhood in Queens, the most diverse county in the United States, and had long held a desire to promote public education in New York City. He regarded the City University of New York (CUNY) as one of the most important public universities in the country. Its unmatched record of educating the city’s minority and immigrant communities was close to his heart.

He also held visiting professorships and research scholarships at Princeton and NYU. Throughout his career, he brought numerous grants to the institutions where he was employed. He also had a number of individual grants, from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Harry Frank Guggenheim, and the German Academic Exchange (DAAD), to name a few.

Eric started his career in the study of communism. His dissertation, “Conflict in the Ruhr: Workers and Socialist Politics in Essen, 1910-1925,” began his research on Socialism and Communism in Germany. His first, critically acclaimed, book was Creating German Communism, 1890-1990: From Popular Protest to Socialist State published in 1997, a work that has aided every scholar of German communism and leftist politics in Germany even since. It is also one of the starting points for his work on European political history and its social impact. This work culminated in his later book on Weimar Germany (Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy, 2007), which was a New York Times Book Review editor’s choice in 2007, among other awards, and has been translated into four languages. In this book, he shows his mastery of European history and his deep interest in German political history. This book stands out, not just as one of the most definitive works to date on the subject, but for its readability and the vivid images it paints. It will be the standard textbook on the Weimar era for years to come.

His work in genocide studies started with an examination of Soviet actions in an article entitled “Racial Politics Without the Concept of Race: Reevaluating Soviet Ethnic and National Purges,” in the journal Slavic Review (2002). Weitz argued that racial concepts and racist practices were not always named as such, but that racial thinking nevertheless was at the heart of genocidal politics and actions. He expanded on this important argument in his book A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation, from 2003. The book is an important contribution to the role of identity politics in the history of genocide. In it, he sought to explain how national and racial concepts are modern forms defining human difference, that they are neither self-evident nor primordial, and that they have indeed been used as justification and reasons for genocide and mass violence. In what would dominate much of his work from that point forward, Eric argued national and racial concepts could not be seen as merely harmless forms of identification, but are often accompanied by exclusion, oppression, and yes, genocide.

His work on genocide had always grappled with the root causes of mass violence and extermination, and it led him to look at the history of human rights. In two articles published in the American Historical Review in 2008 and 2015, respectively, Eric Weitz gave a taste of where his research was heading. In the articles, “From the Vienna to the Paris System: International Politics and the Entangled Histories of Human Rights, Forced Deportations, and Civilizing Missions,” and “Self-Determination: How a German Enlightenment Idea Became the Slogan of National Liberation and a Human Right,” Eric covered parts of the intellectual and political history of the modern concept of rights and their problematic entanglements, as he put it.

Eric Weitz’s last book, his crowning achievement and an invaluable contribution to the field of Human Rights studies, A World Divided: The Global Struggle for Human Rights in the Age of Nation States, was published in 2019 with Princeton University Press. It was also the subject of a book forum of the March 2021 issue of this journal. The book covers the history of rights and asks, “Who has access to rights? What do we mean by human rights? And how do we obtain rights?” It argues that the expansion and questioning of rights have caused conflict and mass violence, and often denial of rights, in particular, in its uneasy relationship to the rise of nation-states. In his study of human rights, Eric exposed the problematic reality of rights being tied to our national belonging and questioned who in the national contexts have the right to have rights. It is a sobering and important question that culminates in a wide critique of our current rights regimes and the national and international frameworks in which they operate. It is a work that will engender debate and further human rights research.

Outside of academia, Eric wrote opinion pieces, covering public debates and policy around ongoing genocides, the historical acknowledgement of genocides such as the Armenian, and the work of the International Criminal Court in bringing genocide perpetrators to justice. He also joined the chorus of academics who, in 2016, raised the alarm about the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump and the dangerous effects his presidency would have on the country.

Since 2006, he was also the series editor for “Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity” at Princeton University Press, helping guide numerous influential works to fruition. Eric was also a university leader, serving as Dean of the Humanities and Arts at City College. While Dean, he was promoted to Distinguished Professor of History at City College and the CUNY Graduate Center. A person of immense integrity, he resigned from the deanship in 2016 because he had been asked to slash the humanities budget. He argued that he could not in good conscience participate in the decimation of the humanities faculty and the consequent silencing of minority and immigrant voices at City College.

He could now plough his energies into purely academic work. He helped organize the City College Human Rights seminar, which include participation from faculty who work in the field from all NYC colleges and Universities. Top scholars in the field of Human Rights are invited to give papers that are then discussed in the seminar. This seminar has and will continue to make important contributions to the scholarship in this field. As in his courses, Eric was particularly interested in reading works that challenged him and with which he disagreed. Those who attended these seminars can attest to the vigorous discussion he engendered and the crucial contributions he voiced. Similarly, in his courses, he often assigned readings that he would later critique in depth. He thrived on a good academic discussion. And it was in this process that he taught historical method. Not only did he insist that a good historian must be widely read, but that they must always engage ideas and texts with which they differ. He was also uncommonly comfortable with criticism of his own ideas. He often emphasized that a historian must develop a thick skin, and he often saw criticism as an occasion to improve his work.

Eric Weitz was an exceptionally generous friend, mentor, advisor, and colleague. The word that sums up his career is “ethical”: his work and scholarship was deeply ethical, and his subject matter was the ethical treatment of others. His work reveals a profound concern for human rights and respect for the dignity of others. He never succumbed to the hierarchical thinking of academia and made conscious efforts to treat graduate students, junior, and senior faculty equally. His life and career have already had a deep impact on the historical field and every person he encountered. That impact will continue through his published work through generations.

Outside of academia, he was a man who enjoyed lively conversation and fine wine and his hidden talent of baking – he had spent time working at a bakery while earning his degree. Always a convivial social presence, he and his partner and publisher Birgitta van Rheinberg at Princeton University Press were always gracious hosts.

Eric Weitz was my PhD advisor, and I was the first whom he guided from beginning to end through my PhD career at the University of Minnesota. I remember the experience as if it was yesterday, the spring day in 2000, when he called me to introduce himself and recruit me for the doctoral programme at the University of Minnesota. I had just finished his book on German Communism in my senior German history course. He showed a genuine interest in my research pursuits and made clear he wanted to help guide me through the graduate studies. He relayed his knowledge of City College, where I gained my undergraduate degree, and we talked about his background in New York City. He quickly persuaded me to go to the University of Minnesota. From the beginning, he was demanding but extremely supportive. I have come to fully understand the level of his support and the level of his guidance after many years of hearing of other colleagues’ graduate studies experiences. Throughout his career, he only took on the role as a primary PhD advisor to a few students and, when he did, he poured everything into us. I look back at those years with immense gratitude and appreciation. Between the demanding reading lists, the lively classes, and our weekly discussions, a genuine friendship developed. The year after I finished, he was very helpful on the job market, and he understood particularly well my decision to accept a job at CUNY. He would himself make the same choice a few years later.

One fact that is especially hard to quantify, but that I believe every female reader will particularly understand, is that he never gendered me or saw me as anything other than his intellectual equal. I took it for granted in those early years, but I was reminded in the rise of the MeToo movement how rare my experience was. His support was unwavering and invaluable in an academic world that can still be quite hostile to women. If we did not meet in a seminar or a conference, we would always meet up at least once a semester to discuss both of our research and often discover that there was a great deal of overlap; we were intellectually kindred spirits. We would debate concepts and historical interpretations, but also campus politics, politics in general, and the goings-on in our lives. In this, give-and-take, there was gossip, a healthy dose of self-deprecating humour, and always much of laughter. He is sorely missed by those of us with the privilege to have known him. Though cruelly cut short, his was a life well-lived in every sense.

Sarah K. Danielsson
Professor of History, Queensborough College
Executive Director of CUNY Academy, Graduate Center-CUNY


May 20, 2021
On the Tenth Day of the Gaza War

As scholars of Jewish Studies, the Holocaust, genocide, and human rights, we study and teach about a wide range of processes and cases of mass atrocities and state violence, and we unequivocally support the right of Israelis and of Palestinians to exist in peace. 

We also have a responsibility to center the voices and perspectives of victims and survivors of state violence.  We see that Israel commits state violence, and we must not remain silent about it. Indeed, we teach students about the dangers of remaining silent and about the importance of speaking up and taking action. This is particularly significant in this case, as Palestinians, their history, and the ongoing Israeli state violence against them since the Nakba in 1948 have been marginalized in our fields. 

We write as 3350 Hamas rockets into Israel have (to date) killed 12 people, including 2 children and the overwhelming Israeli retaliation on Gaza has (to date) killed 217 people, including 63 children, injured 1500, displaced 52,000 people, destroyed international media headquarters in Gaza as well as another 132 buildings, and smashed infrastructure crucial to daily life. Israel has launched at least 1450 airstrikes on Gaza; in just one night 62 Israeli fighter jets dropped 110 bombs on the Strip.  

We deplore the violence on both sides. The violence perpetrated by Hamas is a predictable reaction to decades of oppression and subordination of Palestinians, but this does not justify attacks on civilian populations.

The violence must cease, and better conditions must ensue to secure Palestinians’ rights equal to those of all Israelis.

We therefore call on governments, the United Nations, the European Union, and the International Criminal Court to:

(1) Work to protect Palestinians in Israel, under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and in Gaza now and in the future. 

(2) End support for Israeli military aggression. 

(3) Hold accountable all those responsible for documented war crimes and human rights violations. 

(4) Protect the freedom of the press by mounting an independent investigation into the Israeli airstrike that targeted and destroyed a Gaza City building housing the AP, broadcaster Al-Jazeera, and other media.

Debórah Dwork, Center Director

Center Advisory Board:

Elissa Bemporad, Ungar Chair in East European Jewish History and the Holocaust, Professor, Department of History, Queens College, and Graduate Center-CUNY

Francesca Bregoli, Joseph and Oro Halegua Chair in Greek and Sephardic Jewish Studies, Associate Professor, Department of History, Queens College, and Graduate Center-CUNY

Dagmar Herzog, Distinguished Professor of History, Graduate Center-CUNY

Benjamin Carter Hett, Professor, Department of History, Hunter College and Graduate Center-CUNY

Eli Karetny, Deputy Director, Ralph Bunche Institute 

Steven Remy, Professor, Department of History, Brooklyn College and History Program, Graduate Center-CUNY

Victoria Sanford, Professor of Anthropology, Lehman College; Founding Director, Center for Human Rights & Peace Studies; Doctoral Faculty, Department of Anthropology, Graduate Center-CUNY

John Torpey, Presidential Professor of Sociology and History, Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, Graduate Center-CUNY

Eric Weitz, Distinguished Professor of History, City College and Graduate Center-CUNY


New work by Debórah Dwork

A new publication by Center founding Director, Debórah Dwork, is out in a special issue of Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History.  Titled “Buried Words: Sexuality, Violence and Holocaust Testimonies,” this special issue tackles a long-taboo subject.  Dwork’s article examines the “silence [that] has shrouded the experience of sexual abuse of and sexual barter by Jewish adolescent boys during the Holocaust.”  Her piece analyzes Nate Leipciger’s memoir, The Weight of Freedom, which “offers a rare window onto a phenomenon singularly absent from young Jewish males’ narratives and scholarship about their lives.” And, widening her lens, Dwork “reflects upon the silence — survivors’ silence and scholars’ silence — around these interactions, examining the prompts for it and shifting interpretations over time.” 

Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History is published by Taylor & Francis


May 6, 2021
Statement in Protest Against Violence in Colombia

As a doctoral student at the GC-CUNY who offers administrative support to the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, I vehemently condemn Colombia’s governmental actions against civilians who protest measures that harm the most vulnerable in the midst of the COVID19 pandemic. NGOs and activists have reported physical violence, arbitrary detentions, sexual violence, and 37 murders at the hands of Colombia’s National Police. 

I call on President Duque to stop incentivizing police violence against protesters, renounce his announced intention to declare a state of internal disturbance, and lift the current ban on social media and internet access. I call on President Duque to convene different sectors of society to discuss ways to stop the violence. 

And I call on all persons of good will to pay close attention to the situation in Colombia and to increase international pressure on its government. Through your solidarity, the eyes of the world will be on Colombia, deterring President Duque’s government from committing atrocities and violating human rights.

Juan Acevedo, Doctoral Student

Debórah Dwork, Center Director

Center Advisory Board:

Elissa Bemporad, Ungar Chair in East European Jewish History and the Holocaust, Professor, Department of History, Queens College, and Graduate Center-CUNY

Francesca Bregoli, Joseph and Oro Halegua Chair in Greek and Sephardic Jewish Studies, Associate Professor, Department of History, Queens College, and Graduate Center-CUNY

Dagmar Herzog,Distinguished Professor of History, Graduate Center-CUNY

Benjamin Carter Hett, Professor, Department of History, Hunter College and Graduate Center-CUNY.

Eli Karetny, Deputy Director, Ralph Bunche Institute 

Zachariah Mampilly, Marxe Endowed Chair of International Affairs at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, CUNY.

Steven Remy, Professor, Department of History, Brooklyn College and History Program, Graduate Center-CUNY

Victoria Sanford, Professor of Anthropology, Lehman College; Founding Director, Center for Human Rights & Peace Studies; Doctoral Faculty, Department of Anthropology, Graduate Center-CUNY

John Torpey, Presidential Professor of Sociology and History, Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, Graduate Center-CUNY

Eric Weitz, Distinguished Professor of History, City College and Graduate Center-CUNY


February 25, 2021

Statement in Support of Scholars of the Holocaust in Poland

The Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity (The Graduate Center—City University of New York) protests the pressure exerted by Polish state institutions on scholars of the Holocaust, and the concerted campaign against Professors Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski in particular. As scholars, we stand in solidarity with these historians of the Holocaust and their meticulous efforts to determine and report objective historical truth. We expect that Poland’s institutions of justice will show their independence from political influence, and that the government of Poland will, like other democratic countries, demonstrate its courage and continued self-confident commitment to creating an environment in which internationally respected scholars can pursue their research without fear of retribution.

Debórah Dwork, Center Director

Center Advisory Board:

Elissa Bemporad, Ungar Chair in East European Jewish History and the Holocaust, Professor, Department of History, Queens College, and Graduate Center-CUNY

Francesca Bregoli, Joseph and Oro Halegua Chair in Greek and Sephardic Jewish Studies, Associate Professor, Department of History, Queens College, and Graduate Center-CUNY

Dagmar Herzog,Distinguished Professor of History, Graduate Center-CUNY

Benjamin Carter Hett, Professor, Department of History, Hunter College and Graduate Center-CUNY.

Eli Karetny, Deputy Director, Ralph Bunche Institute 

Zachariah Mampilly, Marxe Endowed Chair of International Affairs at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, CUNY.

Steven Remy, Professor, Department of History, Brooklyn College and History Program, Graduate Center-CUNY

Victoria Sanford, Professor of Anthropology, Lehman College; Founding Director, Center for Human Rights & Peace Studies; Doctoral Faculty, Department of Anthropology, Graduate Center-CUNY

John Torpey, Presidential Professor of Sociology and History, Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, Graduate Center-CUNY

Eric Weitz, Distinguished Professor of History, City College and Graduate Center-CUNY


As I See It: by Center Advisory Board Members

Victoria Sanford, Barriozona
“Central America Needs a Regional Commission to Prosecute Corruption”


Elissa Bemporad, Alon Confino, and Derek Penslar, Forward
“A New Declaration Aims to Fight Antisemitism Without Curtailing Free Speech”

https://forward.com/opinion/466509/a-new-declaration-aims-to-fight-antisemitism-without-curtailing-free/

Antisemitism is on the rise, with powerful instigators behind it, but the struggle against it is at risk of being derailed by acrimonious divisions among Jews and others over its very meaning. The drive for adoption of a single, fixed definition of antisemitism has devolved into a polemical political debate on Israel and Palestine with crucial free-speech implications.

Today we introduce the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which was crafted by a group of scholars from the United States, Israel, Europe and the U.K, after more than a year of intense discussion and study. The declaration has been endorsed by 200 eminent scholars with a wide spectrum of political views. All of us agree on the need for a guide to effectively combat antisemitism that protects space for an open debate around all possibilities around the future for Israelis and Palestinians.


Ben Carter Hett, Los Angeles Times
Op-Ed: The Trump insurrection was America’s Beer Hall Putsch

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-01-16/donald-trump-insurrection-capitol-beer-hall-putsch

Very soon after the nation watched in horror as a mob ransacked the U.S. Capitol, journalists and politicians began speaking of a coup.

The fallout from these events has been dramatic and will continue. But we need to understand a crucial point. The guy in the Viking hat and his friends could break windows. A member of the mob could kill a police officer. Rioters could plot to assault members of Congress. All of this is terrifying. But these people and their criminal actions are not the most dangerous threat to our democracy. The real threat comes from people in business suits or police uniforms who are inside the system — and that threat remains.

A historical example illustrates the point.


Ben Carter Hett, Los Angeles Times
“Op-Ed: What the bunker mentality really means” 

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-11-15/donald-trump-election-delusions-autocrats

In the last week, a mash-up of a scene from “Downfall,” the movie about Hitler’s last days, has been circulating on social media. The scene is the one where Hitler bursts into an operatic rage when his officers tell him of a failed attempt to drive the Russians from Berlin. In the mash-up, Hitler is getting a different kind of bad news: All the votes are going to be counted and he will lose the election.

Donald Trump isn’t a dictator. He won office in a free and fair election and will leave it through the same democratic process. But there is a serious point underneath the mash-up comedy. Refusal to accept unpleasant reality is the hallmark of dictators, especially if disaster or defeat is looming. From his bunker, Hitler ordered imaginary armies to fight fantastical battles. Somehow, he thought, victory could be snatched from certain defeat.


Ben Carter Hett, Los Angeles Times
“What Do We Do With Trump’s Lackeys and Enablers Now?”

In 1954, Eugen Kogon worried that the “the silent gradual, creeping, unstoppable return” of the ex-Nazis seemed to be the “fate” of Germany’s new democracy. Kogon, a Christian socialist intellectual who had been imprisoned in concentration camps, was not alone in his concern. For years after the 1949 founding of West Germany, liberal-minded Germans worried the transition to democracy would end with a rebound to authoritarianism. No one would ever think it’s easy, making the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Especially when the dictatorship has been a particularly brutal and murderous one. But for Kogon, and others yearning for democracy, a basic problem presented itself. What do you do with the people who ran the old regime? And what do you do with the masses of the old regime’s followers? Aren’t they all waiting for restoration—and maybe not just waiting, but actively working toward it?

At the end of the Trump era, we face a similar question. Trump’s post-election attempt to subvert democracy was no surprise. And the raiding of the Capitol was the sort of uncomfortable shock we knew might occur. It was, as I’ve written, our Beer Hall Putsch. This makes aggressive punishments for those involved an obvious need. If we do not do this, our democracy could spiral into dictatorship. Especially insidious has been the Republican Party’s reluctance to stop Trump, even after this attempted coup. Hundreds of Congress members still voted to overturn the election and against impeaching the insurrectionist-in-chief. The lesson is clear: One political party is committed to authoritarianism. We need a harsh reckoning now with those who directly supported the coup attempt.

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