Release

Holocaust Scholar Daniel Goldhagen Addresses Jewish Studies Center

Contact: Catherine Herman (518) 437-4980

ALBANY, N.Y. (January 21, 2005) -- Holocaust scholar and author Daniel Goldhagen will speak at a reception for the Center for Jewish Studies on Jan. 27, 2005, 5:45 p.m., in the University Art Museum on the uptown campus. The event is free and open to the public.

�Daniel Goldhagen is one of the most important Holocaust studies scholars of our day,� said Mark A. Raider, director of the Center and chair of the Judaic Studies Department. �He has single-handedly changed the nature of the international debate over the Holocaust and the history of Nazi Germany. His runaway bestselling book, Hitler�s Willing Executioners, was nothing short electrifying and proved to be a turning point for the way the public and the academy understand the place of the Holocaust in history.�

Goldhagen, a former Harvard University professor and leading student of the Holocaust, is best known for Hitler�s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), a highly controversial book that sparked an international firestorm on the Holocaust and the history of Nazi Germany. To date, Hitler�s Willing Executioners has been published in more than a dozen languages. More recently, Goldhagen published A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002). He has appeared on PBS's "News Hour," "Nightline," "Larry King Live," "This Week with David Brinkley," and dozens of American, European, and Israeli news shows, and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times op-ed page, Commentary, the New Republic, the Forward, and other leading publications.

�Dr. Goldhagen�s appearance at the University illustrates the importance of the Center for Jewish Studies for the campus community and the Capital Region,� said Alan Goldberg, chairman of the Center�s advisory board and president of First Albany. �We are committed to educating the students and the community as a whole about the significance of Jewish civilization and understanding the complexity of the world we inhabit.�

UAlbany is home to more than 16,000 students, including the ninth largest concentration of Jewish students on any college campus in the country. The Center for Jewish Studies draws on an advisory board made up of Capital Region leaders as well as alumni and supporters from across New York. To date, the Center has raised approximately $1.25 million in private sector pledges and gifts toward endowing the Center and a new professorship in European Jewish studies, with expertise in the Holocaust.

For more information contact Yoel Hirschfeld in the Center for Jewish Studies, tel. (518) 591-8514, or visit www.albany.edu/jewishstudies.