Emory Rothschild Lecture: Morris Abram

The year 2018 marks the seventieth anniversary of two momentous events in twentieth-century history: the birth of the State of Israel and the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Both remain tied together in the ongoing debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, global antisemitism, and American foreign policy. Yet the surprising connections between Zionism and the origins of international human rights are completely unknown today.

James Loeffler of the University of Virginia will explore the stories of several Jewish founders of international human rights, following them from the prewar shtetls of eastern Europe to the postwar United Nations, a journey that includes the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials, the founding of Amnesty International, and the UN resolution of 1975 labeling Zionism as racism. As in his critically acclaimed book,“Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century,” he will challenge long-held assumptions about the history of human rights and offer a startlingly new perspective on the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The evening’s program and lecture will also commemorate the centennial of Morris B. Abram, a Georgia-born attorney, civil rights leader, and human rights activist, whose papers are housed at Emory’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library.

The lecture will be followed by a reception and book signing.