2023-2024 Events & Programs

From Zion Shall Go Forth the Law: The Unknown History of Jews and Human Rights

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Date: Tuesday, April 02, 2019

Time: 07:30pm - 

LOCATION: Douglass Student Center, 100 George Street, New Brunswick

Support provided by the Henry Schwartzman Endowed Fund.

James Loeffler, Berkowitz Professor of Jewish History, University of Virginia

2018 marked the seventieth anniversary of two momentous events: the birth of the State of Israel and the creation of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Both remain tied together in the ongoing debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, global anti-Semitism, and American foreign policy. Yet the surprising connections between Zionism and the origins of international human rights are completely unknown today. Drawing on his recent book, James Loeffler will discuss how the forgotten Jewish past of human rights holds timely lessons for thinking about the intertwined futures of global justice and Jewish politics.

James Loeffler is a scholar of Jewish, European, and international history, and the history of human rights. His publications include: Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century, and the forthcoming collection, The Law of Strangers: Jewish Lawyers and International Law in Historical Perspective.