We live in a culture profoundly influenced by the legacy of the Holocaust. Nearly 80 years later, the Nazi extermination effort against the world’s Jews continues to serve as a moral lens through which we judge political action. Despite the centrality of the Holocaust to contemporary social thought, the study of the event and its aftermath has remained largely peripheral to the social sciences, including economics, sociology, psychology, and political science. This has started to change over the last decade.

In this lecture, Jeffrey Kopstein will discuss how social scientists have deepened our understanding of what is arguably the “index case” of violence in the modern world. Kopstein is a professor of political science and director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on interethnic violence, voting patterns of minority groups, antisemitism, and anti-liberal tendencies in civil society, with a particular emphasis on European and Russian Jewish history. These topics are central to his latest books, “Intimate Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms on the Eve of the Holocaust” (Cornell University Press, 2018) and “Politics, Memory, Violence: The New Social Science of the Holocaust” (Cornell University Press, 2023).

All Holocaust Living History Workshop events are free and open to the public, but registration is required. Registration will open approximately one month before the event date.

Sponsor: Lou Dunst Memorial Lecture

About the Holocaust Living History Workshop

This event is a part of the Holocaust Living History Workshop (HLHW) series, an education and outreach program sponsored by the UC San Diego Library and the Jewish Studies program. It aims to preserve the memories of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust by offering public events involving witnesses, descendants and scholars and through the use of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive. Past HLHW workshops are now part of the Library’s digital collections and can be accessed online.