Talks at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies

Media and political attention are focused on college campuses, and Jews figure prominently in these debates. Jewish Studies programs now find themselves at ground zero of public debates around academic freedom, antisemitism, and the role of higher education. On March 11, 2025, philosopher Dr. Gilah Kletenik and historian Dr. Devin E. Naar engaged in a conversation moderated by Dr. Daniel Heller to reflect on key questions provoked by our current moment. The event took place on the University of Washington campus in Seattle, Washington.

Interview starts at 4:03. Bestselling fantasy author Leigh Bardugo ("Shadow and Bone") discusses her new novel, “The Familiar,” with faculty member Canan Bolel in this December 8, 2024, conversation at the University of Washington. In the novel, Bardugo follows the struggles of a “converso” heroine — from a family forced to convert to Christianity and keep its Jewish heritage secret in 16th-century Spain — who draws magic from her family's secret language, Ladino, and the refranes (sayings) that preserve Sephardic Jewish wit and wisdom across time. In the conversation, Bardguo discusses what drew her to this story and setting, how she wove Ladino into her narrative, the family history that inspired her, and the collaboration with Bolel that led to the selection of refranes included in the book.

Spanish & Portuguese Citizenship Oral Histories: Colette Capriles by UW Stroum Center for Jewish Studies

Present-day discussions of anti-Semitism often involve Israel and the Zionist movement... but before the 20th century, Jews' and Jewish scholars' understandings of anti-Semitism were completely connected with Europe and Christianity. In the final episode of the season, guest Liora R. Halperin looks at how 19th-century Jewish settlers to Palestine were influenced by the anti-Semitism they had experienced in the Russian Empire: how it shaped their perceptions of their new home (or didn't), and what we can learn from their story today.

Can Jews be anti-Semitic against other Jews? In this episode, guest Devin E. Naar looks at the history of Jewish prejudice against other Jews in the United States, from the very first American Jewish settlers in the 1600s to twentieth-century efforts to exclude Jews from the Muslim world from Jewish institutions — as the American Jewish community struggled to hold on to its "precarious whiteness."

Has anti-Semitism always been the same, or have ideas about Jewishness, and suspicion towards Jews, changed over time? In this episode, guest Ana Gómez-Bravo explores these questions by looking at the lives of Jews and "conversos" (Jewish converts to Christianity) in medieval Spain, explaining how Catholic authorities tried to define and restrict their Jewish and converso residents, in a conversation that spans medieval medicine, forbidden breastfeeding, decoy hams, official guides to Jewishness, and the expulsion of Jews in 1492.

We often connect Germany with anti-Semitism, but in the early twentieth century, Germany was actually considered one of the best places in the world to be Jewish. How and why did the progressive Weimar Republic give way to the genocidal Nazi regime... and could it happen here? In this episode, guest Laurie Marhoefer explains the rise of the Nazi party in one of the one progressive places in the world, detailing the swift and dramatic shift in government, efforts to resist, and troubling echoes of these events in the present day.

The United States was the country where Jews came to finally be free from anti-Semitism... or was it? Historians of the modern era tend to think of the U.S. as an exceptional place for Jews — a place where Jewish people have been able to exist in relative freedom from violence and prejudice. But is this common understanding of the United States as "the exception" accurate? In this episode, guest Susan A. Glenn discusses the history of anti-Semitism in the U.S., touching on the Second Ku Klux Klan, anti-Semitic industrialist Henry Ford, the "mother of all conspiracy theories," the secret rehabilitation of Nazi war criminals, and the resurgence of anti-Semitism in the U.S. in the present day. In this five-part inaugural season of "Jewish Questions," the Stroum Center's podcast series, hosts Laurie Marhoefer and Noam Pianko delve into the causes and consequences of anti-Semitism across history with faculty experts from the University of Washington.

Myanmar is facing charges that its military committed genocide against the Rohingya people, beginning with a series of violent attacks in 2017. In January 2020, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a preliminary ruling granting “provisional measures” to protect the Rohingya — with no immediate effects on the ground. Frederick Michael Lorenz, senior lecturer at the University of Washington's Jackson School of International Studies, will review the legal proceedings against Myanmar, and the prospects for justice at the international level.

Although usually understood as a “European” event, the Holocaust also resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews born in the predominantly Muslim world of the Ottoman Empire (e. g., today’s Greece). Grappling with the particularities of their experiences compels us to expand the scope of the Holocaust into the Mediterranean world and to recognize the global factors in dialogue with Hitler’s empire, whether the eugenics movement in the United States or the Armenian genocide.

Nazis viewed Jews as subhuman, and often referred to them as dogs, apes, and vermin. How have Jews experienced and responded to such dehumanization over time? Naomi Sokoloff, Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization at the University of Washington, looks at narratives of hidden children in literature and explores the ways in which animal studies and Holocaust studies can contribute to one another to build greater empathy.

Though there were differences between Germany’s effort to wipe out Jews (and others) and Japan’s massacres, there was a common ideological basis for these outrages. What lay behind Nazi ideology and Japan’s aggressive militarism, and why were they so vicious? Daniel Chirot, Herbert J. Ellison Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the University of Washington, compares the ideologies underlying this violence, as well as looking at other genocides of the 20th century, to show why we cannot rule out the possibility of this kind of violence occurring again. This talk is part of the fall 2020 weekly lecture series "Lessons (Not) Learned from the Holocaust," made possible through the generosity of Steven Baral.

Jan Gross, emeritus professor of history at Princeton University, discusses mass murder and struggles over incorporating the atrocities of the Holocaust into official history by looking at anti-Jewish massacres in 1940s Poland. Jan Gross is the author of groundbreaking books including “Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland” (2000) and "Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz” (2006). He is the Norman B. Tomlinson '16 and '48 Professor of War and Society, emeritus and Professor of History, emeritus, at Princeton University. This talk is part of the fall 2020 weekly lecture series, "Lessons (Not) Learned from the Holocaust," hosted by the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Washington and made possible through the generosity of Steven Baral.

How was Nazi anti-Semitism related to other forms of racism, and what how can this relationship inform racial justice movements today? Nicolaas P. Barr, lecturer in the Comparative History of Ideas, explores the insights of Black intellectuals who reflected on anti-Semitism in the aftermath of the Holocaust when theorizing their own experiences of racism, and what these insight can teach us today. This lecture is part of the fall 2020 weekly series, "Lessons (Not) Learned from the Holocaust."

Özleyiş (Longing) - Columbia Tango Orchestra by Stroum Center for Jewish Studies

Haydi Dostlar rumba (Come on friends) - Mahmure Şenses by Stroum Center for Jewish Studies

Yandım Tokat Yandım (I'm Burned Tokat I'm Burned) - Mary Vartanian by Stroum Center for Jewish Studies

Dr. Christopher Browning, visiting faculty in the University of Washington's Department of History, explains how individuals and organizations mobilized to rescue refugees in Nazi-occupied France through the story of aid worker-turned-rescuer Tracy Strong, Jr. Born in Seattle in 1915, Tracy Strong, Jr. served as a humanitarian relief worker in the Vichy internment camps for “undocumented” refugees, primarily Jews from central Europe, in southern France from 1941-42. Convinced that the most important goal should be to get people out of the camps, not improve life in the camps, Strong set up one of the first “safe houses” for refugees in the French rescue village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. His story illustrates how individuals, working together with community and organizational networks, were able to oppose Nazi policies and save lives in World War II, and offers insights into how concerned citizens can organize to resist inhumane policies today. Christopher R. Browning is the Frank Porter Graham Professor of History Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was formerly on the faculty at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA. He has published nine books on the Holocaust, including “Ordinary Men,” “Origins of the Final Solution,” and “Remembering Survival,” all of which won the National Jewish Book Award. He is currently a visiting instructor for the University of Washington’s Department of History.

In this lecture on Spinoza's legacy as a revolutionary, Professor Jonathan Israel outlines Baruch Spinoza’s key writings in favor of democracy and democratic republicanism–-and against restrictive religious and state institutions-–and explains how these writings were received by Spinoza’s contemporaries. This lecture was held as part of the 2017 Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies. Part I of II.

Doctoral student Emily Gade discusses her research on radicalization, terror attacks, resiliency against violence, and the factors that influence how people respond to trauma. In particular, she examines the work of the Israeli recovery organization ZAKA and the perspectives of its volunteer workers. Emily Gade is a PhD candidate in the Political Science Department at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on civilians in conflict zones, political violence, and nonviolent resistance.

Doctoral student Oded Oron discusses the plight of African migrants in the state of Israel in this talk. The video played during the presentation is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxiQaMJpFfU Oded Oron was born and raised in Tel Aviv, and his research focuses on the political mobilization of labor migrants and undocumented workers in Israel and the USA. He holds degrees in Political Science and Communications as well as in Politics and Government, and is currently pursuing at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington.