From The Ghetto To The Games: Jewish Athletes in Hungary, by Andrew Handler. (Book Review).

NJ Jewish News | Kean to offer master’s degree in Shoa studies: "Kean to offer master’s degree in Shoa studies
by Elaine Durbach
NJJN Bureau Chief/Central

Kean to offer master’s degree in Shoa studies

by Elaine Durbach
NJJN Bureau Chief/Central

Seeking to boost its commitment to “the most weighty moral issues of our time,” Kean University this fall will introduce a master of arts degree in Holocaust and genocide studies.

Students pursuing the degree will focus on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism and select two other genocides to study. The 36-credit program will cover a range of associated subjects, including history, theology, philosophy, ethics, literature, psychology, sociology, and law.

Kean, in Union, becomes the second institution of higher learning in the state to offer such a degree: The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, near Atlantic City, offers a master of arts in Holocaust and genocide studies. Seton Hall University in South Orange includes Holocaust courses in its post-graduate Jewish and Christian studies program but doesn’t offer a master’s program centered on genocide.

While the program is expected to appeal to graduate students studying the liberal arts and social sciences, educators are its primary prospective candidates. The response from teachers has been “very enthusiastic,” said Dr. Bernard Weinstein, a professor of English and Jewish studies who will coordinate the degree program. “They are people who have taken the courses we have been offering and wanted more.”

Weinstein, who wrote the curriculum for the new program and composed the proposal, said that while the idea had been in the works for some time, concrete planning began in late 2001, lent urgency by the events of 9/11. “That really galvanized us,” he said.

The university, working in conjunction with its Holocaust Resource Center, has offered post-graduate courses for many years, but only as part of more general degrees.

“I’m really very honored and happy to be doing this,” Weinstein said.

This past February, the program passed muster with the New Jersey Presidents’ Council, the group that coordinates what degree programs are offered at the state’s institutions of higher learning.

Weinstein said that the new degree would offer an opportunity for study for people involved in diverse career fields in addition to teaching. Participants will examine the concepts of freedom, justice, tyranny, and human responsibility, “which many people would agree are the most weighty moral issues of our time.”

The staff at Kean saw just how extensive interest in the subject is in 2002, when they hosted The Genocidal Mind, an international conference held in conjunction with the Annual Scholars Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches. Cosponsored by the university’s Jewish studies program, the symposium drew more than 300 participants from 16 countries for the 30-topic examination of the relationship between literate civilizations and genocidal mass murder. A book based on the papers presented at the conference will be used for the course.

Kristie Reilly, dean of the university’s Nathan Weiss Graduate School, which will offer the program, said it would focus on historic events but would also explore atrocities currently unfolding in the world. “That’s what is unique about it. The course will focus on the Holocaust, but the students will be looking at issues going on today,” she said. If all goes according to plan, they will have a chance to travel to some of the sites they study.

Reilly said students would also have a chance to tackle a multi-media outreach project. They will work with the Holocaust Resource Center in digitizing its collection of over 200 tapes of survivors’ testimonies so that they can be used to develop a Web site. They will also have the opportunity to work on producing a 90-minute documentary featuring the voices of those who witnessed the Shoa.

Kean president Dawood Farahi has made a priority of promoting Holocaust education as well as genocide and human rights studies. Reilly said Farahi’s support was crucial to the establishment of the master’s program. Farahi also initiated plans to create a human rights institute and to make it a requirement that every student enrolled at Kean take a course in genocide and Holocaust studies.

“He wants our graduates to be equipped to become professionals in the work force, but he feels it’s equally important that they become responsible citizens,” Reilly said.

Paul B. Winkler, executive director of the NJ Commission on Holocaust Education, welcomed the introduction of the Kean program this September. “They have been doing an outstanding job with their workshops and training programs for teachers so that they can educate students about the Holocaust and genocide,” he said. “We feel that now, with this curriculum, they will be training them to teach other teachers as well.”

Winkler, who has been involved in the development of the course, said he was very pleased with the comprehensiveness of the curriculum. “It stretches from Armenia to Darfur today and shows the breadth and depth of genocide throughout the generations.”

He said the commission, knowing the excellence of the instruction, would identify the teachers coming through the Kean program as leaders of Holocaust education in the state.

Resisters, Rescuers, and Bystanders


America’s anti-Semitism in the '30s and '40s. The negative Jewish stereotypes… The reluctance to liberalize U.S. policies on refugees. The journalistic coverage of Jewish subjects in the '30s and '40s... What does US inaction in regard to those victimized by Nazi Germany say about America as a nation, about America as a “haven for the oppressed”???