Previous Distinguished Speakers

Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize winner (1986), American professor and political activist. He is the author of 57 books, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald concentration camps.

Yehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a Member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Michael Berenbaum, an American scholar, professor, rabbi, writer, and filmmaker, who specializes in the study of the memorialization of the Holocaust. He is perhaps best known for his work as Deputy Director of the President's Commission on the Holocaust (1979–1980), Project Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) (1988–1993), and Director of the USHMM's Holocaust Research Institute (1993–1997).

Peter Black, Senior Historian of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Christopher Browning, Frank Porter Graham Professor of History, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Roméo Antonius Dallaire, Canadian humanitarian, author and retired senator and Lieutenant-General who was in charge of the U.N. mission in Rwanda.

Jerry Fowler, Director of the Committee on Conscience at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, on “The Role of Holocaust Remembrance in Combating Genocide.”

Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill, who also wrote histories of many of the signal events of the 20th century, including both world wars, the Holocaust and the Middle East conflict.

Zvi Gitelman, Professor of Political Science and Preston R. Tisch Professor of Judaic Studies (University of Michigan).

Raul Hilberg, American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the world's preeminent scholar of the Holocaust, and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, is regarded as the seminal study of the Nazi Final Solution.

Jan Karski, a Polish World War II resistance movement fighter and later professor at Georgetown University. In 1942 and 1943 Karski reported to the Polish government in exile and the Western Allies on the situation in German-occupied Poland, especially the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the secret German-Nazi extermination camps.

Samuel Kassow, Charles H. Northam Professor of History (Trinity College).

Lawrence Langer, Professor of English Emeritus at Simmons College in Boston, Langer is the foremost scholar of the Holocaust in the field of literature and testimony.

Robert Lifton, American psychiatrist and author, chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence and for his theory of thought reform. He was an early proponent of the techniques of psychohistory.

Franklin Littell, an American Protestant scholar. He is known for his writings rejecting supersessionism and, in light of the Holocaust, advocated educational programs to improve relations between Christians and Jews

Michael Marrus, Professor Emeritus of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto.

Michael Phayer, a historian and Professor Emeritus at Marquette University in Milwaukee and has written on 19th and 20th century European history and the Holocaust.

Antony Polonsky, Walter Stern Hilborn Professor of Judaic and Social Studies (Brandeis University).

Samantha Power, American academic, author of the works on Genocide and Human Rights Studies, and diplomat who currently serves as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations.

David Shneer, Professor and Director of the Program in Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder.

David Wyman, the author of several books on the responses of the United States to Nazi Germany's persecution of and programs to exterminate Jews.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, renowned Russian poet, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature (2007) for his poem "Babi Yar".

Susan Zuccotti, an American historian, specializing in studies of the Holocaust. She has won a National Jewish Book Award for Holocaust Studies for her book The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue and Survival (1987). She also received a National Jewish Book Award for her book Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (2000).