Forum on the Holocaust Legacy. According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.  A watershed in human history, this singular event exposed major flaws in political systems and raised questions about human nature and the future of civilization.  Even nations priding themselves on their sophistication proved susceptible to the politics of exclusion and engaged in systematic violence against religious and ethno-racial minorities. This conference explores the Holocaust in an interdisciplinary perspective, representing history, law, economics, journalism, psychology, sociology, education and political science.  The format reflects the newly approved social studies content areas in public education and will feature web-based curricular resources.  The forum addresses several key questions about the Holocaust and its legacy:  What historical context breeds the totalitarian state and nourishes the machinery for mass destruction? Which legal, educational, and family institutions were harnessed by the Nazi in the service of the Holocaust?  What are the tell-tale signs of a genocide in the making?  How did the extermination of Jews during the Second World War differ from kindred historical events?  Why is fascist ideology still popular today among certain extremist groups?  What are the lessons of the Holocaust and how can we prevent such a catastrophe from happening again? The public forum "Exclusion, Violence, Genocide: The Holocaust and Its Legacy" is part of the Justice & Democracy Forum Series sponsored by the UNLV Center for Democratic Culture and William S. Boyd School of Law.  The conference took place in a virtual format on Wednesday, March 9, 2022.  Among the distinguished speakers discussing the Holocaust legacies were Steven Luckert, US Holocaust Memorial Museum; Addie Rolnick, Boyd School of Law; Frank Rudy Cooper, Boyd School of Law; Robert Futrell, Department of Sociology; Shelley Berkley, Former Congresswoman, U.S. House of Representatives; Michael Kagan, Boyd School of Law; Gregory Brown, Department of History; Esther Finder, President, Generations of the Shoah – Nevada, Susan Dubin, Holocaust Education Resource Specialist. The event was sponsored by the UNLV Center for Democratic Culture, Nevada Governor's Advisory Council on Education Relating to the Holocaust, William S. Boyd School of Law, College of Liberal Arts, Department of Sociology, Department of History, Department of Political Science, Generations of the Shoah–Nevada, Holocaust Survivors Group of Southern Nevada, Jewish Nevada.  Senator Jacky Rosen recorded a statement on CDC Holocaust education program addressed to the forum participants. Center for the Democratic Culture associates assembled the Holocaust Education Resource Library that offers Nevada teachers and students curricular resources in the area of Holocaust education. The conference program can be found here. The confernece video recording is availalbe here.

Forum on Memory of Trauma. Millions of people have experienced slavery, persecution, war and genocide.  Such traumatic events scar the bodies and mark cultural memory for generations to come.  This is what Martin Luther King Jr. stressed in his letter from Birmingham jail where he explained how racial stigma warps the minds of parents and children “when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people. . . .”  This conference focuses on three signature historical events – the Armenian Genocide, the Jewish Holocaust, and racial violence against African Americans.  The panelists explored the multigenerational nature of cultural trauma, showed how traumatic experiences are incorporated into communal narratives, and highlighted the psychological, biological, cultural, and family factors in the transmission of trauma whose cumulative effect is felt long after the traumatic events have ceased.  The public forum “Memory of Trauma: Armenian, Jewish, and African American Experience” is part of the Justice & Democracy Forum Series sponsored by the UNLV Center for Democratic Culture and William S. Boyd School of Law.  The conference took place on Wednesday, March 7, 2018, 4:00-7:00 p.m., at the Tam Alumni Building, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.  Among the distinguished speakers who addressed the forum on the persistence of cultural trauma were Andy Armenian, Honorary Consul of the Republic of Armenia in Las Vegas; Esther Finder, President, Generations of the Shoah – Nevada; Roxann McCoy, President, Las Vegas Chapter of the NAACP; Shelley Berkley, Former Congresswoman, U.S. House of Representatives; Rev. Dr. Ralph Williamson, First African Methodist Episcopal Church; Rev. Leonard B. Jackson, First African Methodist Episcopal Church; Dr. John P. Tuman, Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science, UNLV; Professor Michelle Tusan, Department of History, UNLV; and Professor Simon Gottschalk, Department of Sociology, UNLV.  The conference program can be found here. The audio recording is available on this page.

Forum on Refugee Crisis. Millions of refugees are fleeing war and persecution, looking for safe haven in other countries, hoping to rebuild their lives in faraway, not always hospitable places. Who will accept them and who will turn them away? The refugee crisis we currently face is hardly unprecedented. With the onset of World War II, countless refugees sought to escape Nazi Germany and to flee occupied territories. Jews from all over Europe desperately looked for an asylum. Many failed to find a country willing to open its doors to Jewish refugees. After the war, the Allied forces confronted the refugee problem of enormous proportion. The United Nations laid the groundwork for handling similar calamities in the future. In 1948, the U.N. adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which included Article 14, asserting that “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” Today’s refugee crisis forces us to clarify our obligations under the United Nations Charter and the commitments spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The conference “Refugee Crisis: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives” is part of the Justice & Democracy Forum Series conducted by the UNLV Center for Democratic Culture and William S. Boyd School of Law. The conference will take place on Wednesday, February 15, 2017, 4:00-7:00 p.m., and it will be held at the ball room of the International Gaming Institute, Stan Fulton Building, University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Among the distinguished speakers who will address the challenges confronting the world community are the Hon. Hans Jörg Neumann, Consul General, Federal Republic of Germany; the Hon. Christophe Lemoine, Consul General, France; the Hon. Bernadette Greene, Deputy Consul General, Great Britain; Shelley Berkeley, Former Congresswoman, U.S. House of Representatives; Michael Kagan, Co-director, Immigration Clinic, William S. Boyd School of Law, and Dr. Tiffiany Howard, Director, Center for Migration, Demography, and Population Studies. A reception will follow the conference proceedings. Conference sponsors include UNLV Center for Democratic Culture • William S. Boyd School of Law • College of Liberal Arts • Department of Sociology • Department of History • Department of Political Science • Generations of the Shoah–Nevada • Holocaust Survivors Group of Southern Nevada • Jewish Federation of Las Vegas. The event is held at the ball room of the International Gaming Institute, Stan Fulton Building. Conference attendance is free. The conference program can be found here.