Centre News

Darrell Fasching, co-author of World Religions Today and author
of The Ethical Challenge of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, will be
giving a lecture during the upcoming Colloquium on Religion &
Genocide.

Another of the Colloquium's speakers will be Roy Gutman, Pulitzer
Prize winning journalist for reporting on Serbian death camps.

From April 12 to 14, Centre College will bring major scholars on the Holocaust, genocide and peacemaking to campus for a Colloquium on Religion and Genocide, consisting of three convocations and several workshops. All events are free and open to the public. The event is funded by the Kentucky Humanities Council and an Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) Mellon Grant.

Beth Glazier-McDonald, Stodghill Professor of Religion at Centre, says this Colloquium will bring students together to investigate a charged topic. Along with Centre students, groups of students from nearby colleges and universities, including the University of Kentucky and Berea College, will be participating.

“Religion and genocide are hot button issues,” Glazier-McDonald says. “Students rush to take classes on the Holocaust or to hear speakers about the horrors in Rwanda and Darfur. We want to brainstorm ideas about how to translate that interest into action that effects change in the world. In fact, this is one of the major goals of our Tuesday afternoon breakout sessions.”

In addition, Holocaust education is now mandated in Kentucky’s primary education schools, and Glazier-McDonald says she wants to position Centre as a resource for teachers in Kentucky's public and private schools.

The Colloquium coincides with Holocaust Remembrance Day on Sunday, April 11.

“This is a time to remember and grieve for the destruction of six million Jewish souls, among them 1.5 million children who never had the opportunity to explore their potential,” Glazier-McDonald says. “It's a day when we say, ‘never again,’ and we mean it. I hope that this Colloquium will serve as a reminder that ‘never again’ happens again and again. We have not eradicated genocide from our midst. Darfur, Rwanda and Bosnia stand as all too contemporary reminders.”

Click here for the official colloquium Web page with a full schedule of speakers and workshops.

Speakers include such notables as:

• Roy Gutman, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for reporting on Serbian death camps

• Darrell Fasching, Professor of Religious Studies at University of South Florida; author of The Ethical Challenge of Auschwitz and Hiroshima

• Rose Gatens, Director of the Center for Holocaust and Human Rights Education at Florida Atlantic University

• Alex Meixner, Senior Advisor, Save Darfur Coalition

• Steven Peyton Lee, Professor of Philosophy at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and editor of Intervention, Terrorism, and Torture: Contemporary Challenges to Just War Theory

• Glen Stassen, Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena; author of Just Peacemaking: The New Paradigm for the Ethics of Peace and War