Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Education Center to Host Virtual Fall Events

Manhattan College’s Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith (HGI) Education Center will host four virtual events during the fall semester.

Sunday, September 27, noon
Support the Uyghurs and Stop the Genocide

The HGI Center is calling on all individuals to support the call for abuses against Uyghurs to be considered genocide. Uyghrus are a Muslim minority group that lives mostly in the Xinjiang province in northwestern China. It is believed that the Chinese government has detained up to a million Uyghurs over the past few years in what the state defines as "re-education camps." The government is now also accused of a program of forced sterilization against Uyghur women.

Salih Hudayar, founder and president of the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement, will be the featured speaker. The event is co-sponsored by Manhattan College’s office of Campus Ministry and Social Action, Religious Studies department, Peace and Justice Studies department, as well as the Kehillat Etz Chayim JCRC/AJC of Detroit, the Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History at the University of Michigan, the Martin Springer Institute and the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom. 

Join the virtual event here. 

Thursday, October 15, 7 p.m.
Yousef Bashir, The Words of My Father

Yousef Bashir is a Palestinian-American from the Gaza Strip. Still suffering the effects of a near-catastrophic injury at the hands of an anonymous Israeli Defense Forces soldier, Bashir made his way to the United States. He earned a B.A. in international affairs from Northeastern University and an M.A. in coexistence and conflict from Brandeis University. Now living in Washington, D.C., Bashir has worked on Capitol Hill and served as a member of the Palestinian diplomatic delegration to the United States. He is an accomplished author, a vigorous advocate of Israeli-Palestinian peace and highly sought-after public speaker.

The event is co-sponsored by Manhattan College’s departments of Religious Studies and Peace and Justice Studies. 

Join the virtual event here.

Thursday, October 22, 7 p.m.
Film Screening: Who Will Write Our History, in conversation with Stephenie Young

Stephenie Young, Ph.D., is a professor in the English department and research associate for the SSU Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Salem State University. She completed her M.A. and Ph.D. in comparative literature at Binghamton University and her B.A. in art history from California State University, Long Beach. Her forthcoming book, The Forensics of Memorialization, is about the "forensic imagination" and how traumatic material culture normally considered scientific evidence is used instead to create visual narratives that shape memory politics in post-conflict former Yugoslavia. She has received numerous fellowships and grants to conduct her research on comparative genocide and aesthetics. 

The film will be distributed for watching two weeks before the event. Join the virtual event here.

Tuesday, November 10, time TBD
Peter Hayes: Annual Kristallnacht and Frederick Schweitzer Lecture

Peter Hayes, Ph.D., is a professor of history and German at Northwestern University. He specializes in the histories of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust and, in particular, in the conduct of the nation’s largest corporations during the Third Reich. His talk, titled “November 1938 as a Turning Point?” will focus on the November 1938 incident known as Kristallnacht, when Nazis in Germany set fire to synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses and killed close to 100 Jews. In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, also called the “Night of Broken Glass,” approximately 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. 

Join the virtual event here. 

For more information about any of the HGI Center’s fall events, contact Mehnaz Afridi, director of the Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Education Center, at mehnaz.afridi@manhattan.edu.