Honorary Advisory Board

Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat, is a partner at Washington, D.C. law firm, Covington & Burling heading the firm’s international practice, and is senior strategist at APCO Worldwide. He has held key senior positions in three US administrations, including chief White House domestic policy adviser to President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981); U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs, and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration (1993-2001). He was also named Special Representative of the President and Secretary of State on Holocaust-Era Issues under the Clinton Administration, successfully negotiating major agreements with Switzerland, Germany, Austria, France and other European countries, covering restitution of property, payment for slave and forced laborers, recovery of looted art, bank accounts, and payment of insurance policies. He served as the United States Ambassador to the European Union from 1993 to 1996.

Professor Antony Polonsky was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and studied history and political science at the University of the Witwatersrand. He went to England on a Rhodes Scholarship in 1961 and read modern history at Worcester College and St Antony’s College. In 1970, he was appointed lecturer in International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science and in 1989 was awarded the title of Professor. In 1992 he was appointed Visiting Professor of East European Jewish History at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA where, in 1993, he was granted the Walter Stern Hilborn Chair in Judaic and Social Studies and was Chair of the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from 1995 to 1998. In 1999, he was appointed Albert Abramson Professor of Holocaust Studies, an appointment held jointly at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Brandeis University. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Warsaw, the Institute for the Human Sciences, Vienna and the University of Cape Town, Skirball visiting fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Senior Associate Member of Saint Antony’s College, Oxford and Honorary Research Fellow at University College, London. Recipient of numerous awards, a recent listing includes:  the decoration Zasłużony w kulturze polskiej for services to Polish Culture by the Polish Minister for Culture and the National Heritage (2015); Chair Historian Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw (2014); a doctorate honoris causa by the Jagiellonian University, Krakow (2014); Member, International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania (2014); Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Independent Lithuania (2012), and many more.

Professor Jonathan Sarna is University Professor and the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University, where he directs its Schusterman Center for Israel Studies. He also is the past president of the Association for Jewish Studies and Chief Historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. Author or editor of more than thirty books on American Jewish history and life, his American Judaism: A History – recently published in a second edition -- won six awards including the 2004 “Everett Jewish Book of the Year Award” from the Jewish Book Council. Sarna is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Academy of Jewish Research. His most recent books are When General Grant Expelled the Jews, Lincoln & the Jews: A History (with Benjamin Shapell), and an edition of Cosella Wayne, by Cora Wilburn, the first (and hitherto unknown) American Jewish novel.

Professor George D. Schwab, was born in Latvia in 1931, interned in the Liepaja ghetto and is a survivor of the Kaiserwald and Stutthof concentration camps. He began his teaching career at Columbia University and became a professor at the City College of New York (The City College and Graduate Center); in 1974, Schwab cofounded the National Committee on American Foreign Policy--an American non-partisan foreign policy think tank, serving as president of the committee from 1993-2015. IN 1984, he contributed a chapter titled “A Decade of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy” to a volume titled Power and Policy in Transition: Essays Presented on the tenth Anniversary of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy in Honor of its Founder, Hans J. Morgenthau. In 1998, he was presented with the Ellis Island Medal of Honor; in 2001, an endowment was established in his honor at the Committee that supports four foreign policy lectures annually; in 2002, the President of Latvia invested Schwab with The Order of the Three Stars, the country’s highest honor; in 2018, he was presented the Elie Wiesel Award by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Margers Vestermanis, Latvian Holocaust survivor, is one of the world’s leading historians on the Holocaust in Latvia. Writer and former Director and Founder of the museum “Jews in Latvia,” Mr. Vestermanis has received awards for his work from the three countries that fought over Latvia: Germany, Russia and Latvia, which awarded him the Order of the Three Stars, its highest order. Mr. Vestermanis was interned in the Riga Ghetto and Kaiserwald concentration camp.

Advisory Board

Mag. Dr. Gerhard Baumgartner, Scientific Director of the Documentation Archive of Austrian Resistance (DÖW).

Dr. Michael Berenbaum, Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust, and a Professor of Jewish Studies at the American Jewish University, and Lecturer in Jewish Community Leadership, School of Enterprise Management and Social Impact. He served as Deputy Director of the President's Commission on the Holocaust (1979–1980), Project Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) (1988–1993), and Director of the USHMM's Holocaust Research Institute (1993–1997).

Sara Clarke-Habibi, Ph.D. is a practitioner and educator in post-conflict peacebuilding, and a consultant with UNICEF for the Western Balkans. She is also a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland), Institute of Psychology and Education.

Dean Amy Deines, Lesley Art + Design; lectures and participates in reviews at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard, Yale School of Architecture and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as international academies.

Professor Erika Doss, Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame College of Arts and Letters. Widely published, Doss is the recipient of several Fulbright awards and has also held fellowships at the Stanford Humanities Center, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Professor Ruvin Ferber, is Professor of Physics and Mathematics and Head of the Laser Centre at the University of Latvia, and a member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. Prof. Ferber is also Chairman of the Judaic Studies Centre of the University of Latvia (sponsor of the Latvia Jewish Names Project and other activities). In 2016, he was awarded Latvia's highest honor, the Order of the Three Stars.

Eva Fogelman, Ph.D. is a social psychologist and psychotherapist, a writer and a filmmaker, and advisor to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Professor Marianne Hirsch, is the William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Professor in the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality.

Professor Steven T. Katz, holds the Alvin J. And Shirley Slater Chair in Jewish Holocaust Studies at Boston University and is the former Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies

Professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Chief Curator of Core Exhibition, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews; and University Professor Emerita and Professor Emerita of Performance Studies, New York University.

Professor Suzanne Lacy, is an internationally acclaimed American artist, social activist, educator, writer and professor at the USC Roski School of Art and Design of the University of Southern California. Her work includes performances, video and photographic installation, critical writing and public art. She served in the education cabinet of Jerry Brown, then mayor of Oakland, California, and as arts commissioner for the city, and has designed multiple educational programs. In recent months, Suzanne has been working with curators and learning project managers of V— A— C Foundation to create “Public Constructions,” a Telebridge between three communities in Moscow and a spectacular building site—a former power station—in the center of the city.  She will be implementing a series of live video transmissions between three local communities. In 2019, Suzanne was honored by the Northern California chapter of ArtTable, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of women in the visual arts, with the Annual Chapter Leadership Award..

Professor Wendy Lower, is the John K. Roth Professor of History and Director of the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College. She chairs the Academic Committee and served as the interim director of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Dr. Frank Mecklenberg, Director of Research and Chief Archivist at Leo Baeck Institute, a research library and archive that documents the history and culture of German-speaking Jewry, primarily in the 19th and 20th centuries, but also including documents dating back to the middle ages.  

Ian Mathew Roy, Director for Research Technology and Innovation at Brandeis University, Founding Head of the MakerLab, Adjunct Professor at the Brandeis International Business School, and a Lecturer in the Anthropology Department.

Professor Harriet F. Senie,  Director, Art History, Art Museum Studies Program. Professor of Art History The City College, CUNY, and also teaches at the CUNY Graduate Center.  She is the author of several books and numerous articles on public art, and is co-founder of the international organization Public Art Dialogue and co-editor of its journal, Public Art Dialogue. She is also a member of New York City’s Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments and Markers.

Professor Dr. Ojars Sparitis, PhD, Chief of the Department for Doctoral studies at Latvian Academy of Art.

Prof. Dr. habil. hist. Aivars Stranga , Full Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, University of Latvia; Head of Department of Latvian and Eastern European History of the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the University of Latvia; Director, Latvian Institute of International Affairs; and Deputy Chairman, Latvia’s History Commission.  In 2019, Latvia’s President Egils Levits awarded Prof. Aivars Stranga the Order of the Three Stars, Latvia’s highest state award.

Ruth Weisberg, artist, Professor of Fine Arts and former Dean at the USC Roski School, is currently the Director of the USC Initiative for Israeli Arts and Humanities, and the founder and President of the Jewish Artists Initiative of Southern California.