2021-2022 “The Root of Hate: From Word and Images to Fear and Violence”
The Root of Hate: From Words and Images to Fear and Violence
Our time is an age of proliferating media—streaming video and podcasts; tweets, instas, and snaps; emails and texts—available at our fingertips all the time. There are so many things said, heard, and seen that it can numb us to the meaning behind words and images. But words and images matter. Words and images can be used to label, to divide, to blame, to sow doubt, to cultivate animosity and fear, and to promote hate and incite violence. This year we explore how words and images might lead to hate. We reflect on the ways that words can create connection or division, nurture empathy or suspicion, promote compassion or hate. We learn how to use words and images to shape a world of relationship, kindness, and human thriving, and, in doing so, how to cut off hate at the root.
2021-2022 Holocaust Lecture Series Brochure and Schedule
Keynote Lecture: Ordinary Monsters: Holocaust Perpetrators through the Eyes of Victims and Historians
Tuesday, October 5, 7:00pm
Godchaux Nursing Annex, Room 155
Mark Roseman, Distinguished Professor in History and Pat M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies at Indiana University Bloomington
“Beast” was the most common term used by victims of the Holocaust to describe their tormentors. But historians are largely in agreement that the perpetrators were ordinary men, performing tasks enjoined by a murderous political system; few were psychopaths or criminally deranged. So, have the historians got it wrong? Can the victims tell us something about what makes a perpetrator and about participation in the Holocaust?
Mark Roseman is Distinguished Professor in History and Pat M Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. He is the author of numerous works on the Holocaust and modern European History, including The Past in Hiding; The villa, the lake, the meeting. The Wannsee Conference and the ‘final solution’; and Lives, reclaimed. A story of rescue and resistance in Nazi Germany. He is the recipient of several awards, including Germany’s prestigious Geschwister Scholl Prize. He is currently general editor of the four volume Cambridge History of the Holocaust.
Film: “Thou Shalt Not Hate”
Thursday, October 28, 7:00pm
The Jay Geller Holocaust Lecture Series Film, presented with the Nashville Jewish Film Festival
A moment’s decision at a traffic accident causes repercussions for a Jewish surgeon and a neo-Nazi’s family. Simone Segre (Alessandro Gassmann) rushes to the scene of a hit and run accident to treat the victim. When he sees a swastika tattooed on the man’s chest, he loosens the tourniquet and leaves him to a certain death. Wracked with guilt the doctor must confront his own ethics and morals while trying to take care of the Nazis family. (2020, Italy, directed by Mauro Mancini)
Winner, Best Italian Film, Venice International Festival; Winner, Best Actor, Alessandro Gassmann, Venice International Festival
Lecture: Tools for Breaking Hate
Monday, November 15, 10:00am
Christian Piccolini, Former Violent Extremist and Author of Breaking Hate and White American Youth
Co-sponsored with the Tennessee Holocaust Commission and Jewish Federation of Nashville and Middle Tennessee
Christian Picciolini is an award-winning television producer, a public speaker, author, peace advocate, and a former violent extremist. After leaving the hate movement he helped create during his youth in the 1980s and 90s, he began the painstaking process of making amends and rebuilding his life. Christian went on to earn a degree in international relations from DePaul University and launched Goldmill Group, a counter‑extremism consulting and digital media firm. In 2016, he won an Emmy Award for producing an anti‑hate advertising campaign aimed at helping people disengage from extremism. Since leaving the white-power movement over two decades ago, Christian has helped hundreds of individuals leave hate behind, and he leads the FREE RADICALS PROJECT, a global extremism prevention network.