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| You are here: 2000 / Workshops, Panels and Seminars / Workshops on Research / Workshop 1 on Research, Teaching About the Holocaust in the University Sector / Presentation by Dr. Debórah Dwork | |||||||||
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Report from Workshop 1 on Research: "Teaching About the Holocaust in the University Sector" Presentation by Mrs. Janice L. Darsa Presentation by Dr. Debórah Dwork Presentation by Professor Norbert Frei Presentation by Dr. Beate Kosmala Presentation by Dr. Marcia Sachs Littell Presentation by Professor Dan Michman Presentation by Dr. Debórah Dwork Dwork, Debórah Presentation by Dr. Debóra Dwork The aim of my presentation is to explore the experience of establishing an undergraduate program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and a doctoral degree program in Holocaust History within the context of a general discussion of the parameters of this new field and the challenges it poses. In the United States at present, tremendous resources are devoted to memorializing the Holocaust, but the base of knowledge and scholarship on which such efforts rest is insecure. Nationally, we have failed to invest to a similar degree in research and teaching at the university level. The creation of the Center for Holocaust Studies at Clark University in 1997 has thus run counter to the national pattern. Its mandate was clear: to establish an enduring intellectual foundation for Holocaust History as a field in its own right. Believing that the study of the Holocaust deserves and requires its own place in the academy, the faculty initiated an undergraduate concentration in Holocaust and Genocide Studies which has developed into an interdisciplinary program that now offers twenty-eight courses taught by fifteen professors in six different departments. A year later, in September 1998, the University established a Ph.D. program specifically in Holocaust History. Students majoring in many disciplines choose to attend these courses and most of them are not well-grounded in European history. This is a pity, but it is also an opportunity. Their interest in the Holocaust provides an entry point into the history of western civilization, which is precisely where education about the Holocaust should be situated. Asking the central question, Why is the Holocaust important to us? Why does it loom so large in our collective memory? permits the answer: the Shoah was the brutal, ruthless, unmitigated and unrelenting betrayal of western civilization. Study of the Holocaust, in other words, goes beyond the history of Nazi Germany, and indeed beyond the boundaries of modern European history. Situating the Holocaust within the context of a two-thousand-year history allows students to grapple with the aspirations, accomplishments, and failures of the civilization to which they belong and to which they will give shape. It shifts the focus from monocausal antisemitism to the legacy of both medieval Christendom and the Enlightenment project. Contrary to their reputation, the medieval church and society were not bigoted and totalitarian but, truly "catholic," were surprisingly tolerant of human diversity and rational enquiry. Similarly, the Holocaust revealed the Enlightenment promise of modernity to be a lie. It made the very notion of "universal progress" or the doctrine of "inalienable rights" risible. This intellectual and educational framework also shifts the focus from the actions of extraordinary people - the people on the highways of history - to the reactions of ordinary people - those on the byways. And while it does not obscure the significance or central role of the perpetrators, it does allow the elucidation of the role of bystanders and witnesses. Finally, it foregrounds the activities of rescuers to a greater degree than was their proportional effect during the war because of their disproportionate moral significance. If the conception and execution of the Holocaust was the betrayal of the promise of western civilization, it was the rescuers who kept faith with the values for which the west claimed to stand. >> Back to top |
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Introduction Opening Session: Messages and speeches Plenary Sessions: Messages and speeches Workshops, Panels and Seminars
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| For information about this production and the Stockholm International Forum Conference Series please go to www.humanrights.gov.se or contact Information Rosenbad, SE-103 33 Stockholm, Sweden | |||||||||