Democracy Matters - Episode 100: The Stakes of Difficult Knowledge
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SUMMARY: “Public memory of the Holocaust and other difficult histories are a high-stakes competition over contested memories, says Dr. Oren Baruch Stier, “Charlottesville reminds us that we can’t disentangle 20th century racism.”
Against a global context of rising antisemitism and increasing levels of disinformation and hate speech, Holocaust education and remembrance are more urgent than ever. An accurate accounting of what happened before, during and after the Holocaust is integral to the process of healing and reconstituting individuals, community and systems of justice.
In this episode, we talk with Dr. Oren Baruch Stier, Director of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program and Professor of Religious Studies in the Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs at Florida International University, about teaching and learning “difficult knowledge” and what the public history of the Holocaust and its memory can teach us about civic engagement and today’s memorial landscape.
Dr. Stier was the keynote speaker for JMU’s 2022 Holocaust Remembrance. Watch his full multimedia public talk.
Links in this episode:
- Levy, S.A. and Sheppard, M. (2018). “Difficult Knowledge” and the Holocaust in History Education. In The Wiley International Handbook of History Teaching and Learning (eds S.A. Metzger and L.M. Harris). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119100812.ch14
- Those Who Were There
- 12 Years That Shook the World
