Bulletin News

03/30/2010 

Even historians who teach about the Nazi Holocaust continue to find this period to be subject to much exploration and contention, one noted Holocaust scholar will discuss on Wednesday, April 14, at SUNY Cortland.

Sanford Gutman of Ithaca, N.Y., a professor emeritus of history at the College, will address “Reflections on Thirty Years of Teaching the Holocaust” at 7 p.m. in Brockway Hall Jacobus Lounge.                  

Presented by the Jewish Studies Committee, the event is free and open to the public. The program is an annual event memorializing “Yom Hashoah,” the tragedy of the Nazi Holocaust, and will feature a traditional, memorial candle-lighting ceremony called “yartzeit.” Refreshments will be served.

Gutman’s talk relates to his 37 years of teaching among the faculty at SUNY Cortland before his retirement last year. He will discuss the many changes in how educators know and understand the Holocaust and how they teach it to younger generations.

“Teaching the Holocaust has been a life-changing experience for me,” Gutman said recently. “Like so many of my students, I have learned the importance of being empathic toward others, especially those different from me, and the importance of acting on my humanistic values.”

“Gutman’s previous lectures and writings on the Holocaust have enlarged our understanding and this talk on his 30-plus years of teaching promises to be as profound and important as his lectures over the years,” commented, Distinguished Service Professor Henry Steck, an event organizer.

Gutman, who grew up in Detroit, Mich., focused on history as an undergraduate student at Wayne State University and earned his master of arts and doctoral degrees at the University of Michigan, specializing in modern European history.

He joined SUNY Cortland’s History Department in 1972. An invitation from his department chair in 1979 to teach a course in Modern Jewish History led to his growing interest in that subject, and the decision to add to his teaching repertoire that course and related ones on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Holocaust. To that end, in 1986 Gutman attended the Yad Vashem Summer Institute on Teaching the Holocaust and in 1991 was an invited seminar participant in the University Teaching of Anti-Semitism at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Gutman’s deep interest in the interlocking subjects of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and the Arab-Israeli conflict has led to many university and public lectures. He has written more than 35 book reviews and manuscript reviews on Jewish and French history.

A former president of the New York State Association of European historians, his scholarship has taken him to France and Israel during summers and sabbaticals. Subjects on which he has explored, written published scholarship, and presented at conferences and invited lectures range from the French Restoration (1815-1830) to French Jewish history and the Holocaust in France.

He has received several SUNY Cortland travel and teaching improvement grants. A Faculty Research Fellowship from the Research Foundation of SUNY in 1983 helped Gutman to research Jewish identity in France at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. He participated in two National Endowment for the Humanities summer institutes, both at University of California-Berkeley, in 1982 and 1989, respectively.

At the College, he served as a graduate coordinator for the Master of Science in Education in Social Studies and the Master of Arts in History and was faculty advisor to the History Club and Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society. Active in Jewish Studies, he coordinated the program’s committee for more than 10 years and currently serves as interim coordinator. He was faculty advisor to the Jewish Student Society, now called Hillel, for 15 years. Since 1975, he has been and continues to serve as the College’s Jewish chaplain.

Gutman continues teaching part-time at SUNY Cortland and also taught at Cornell University in 2009. He has served as a visiting professor of modern Jewish history at Cornell University, Ithaca College and Syracuse University.

In addition to the Jewish Studies Committee, the event also is sponsored by the Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies (CGIS), the President's Office, the History Department and Hillel.

For more information, contact Linda Lavine, associate professor of psychology, at (607) 753-2040.