Fake News in 1930s’ Germany and Today

The rise to power of the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1930s was amplified by institutionalized propaganda and suppression of truth. Today, challenges to free expression of truth are threatening democratic values in the U.S. and around the world. Following a lecture by Professor Steven Wasserstrom (Reed College) on the repression of truth through organized propaganda, Dr. William Weitzer (Leo Baeck Institute) and Dr. Friderike Heuer will join him on a panel to discuss from the similarities and differences between then and now.

About Friderike Heuer: Born in post-war Germany and trained as a lawyer, Friderike Heuer immigrated to the US in 1981. She received her Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the New School for Social Research in 1986. After teaching for 15 years at the undergraduate and graduate levels at Lewis & Clark college and doing research focused on memory for emotional events, she retired in 2004 to pursue her interest in the photographic arts. Her montage work has been shown in both solo and group exhibits. She was a co-founder of Zeitgeist NW, an organization dedicated to bringing contemporary German culture to the Pacific Northwest. She writes for Oregon Arts Watch and also a daily blog dedicated to cultural and political discussion of national and European issues.

About Steven M. Wasserstrom: Steven M. Wasserstrom is The Moe and Izetta Tonkon Professor of Judaic Studies and the Humanities at Reed College in Portland, where he has taught since 1987. His books include Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam, (1995) and Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos (1999). In 2003 he selected, edited and annotated The Fullness of Time: Poems by Gershom Scholem. The second edition, Greetings From Angelus Poems by Gershom Scholem was published in 2018. All Religion Is Inter-Religion, Engaging the Work of Steven M. Wasserstrom, with editors Kambiz GhaneaBassiri and Paul Robertson is forthcoming in July 2019. Wasserstrom has been an invited Fellow at The Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University (Jerusalem), an Invited Scholar at the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung (Berlin), and member of the Working Group on Messianism, The Tikvah Project on Jewish Thought (Princeton). He is presently working on a study of Hans Blumenberg’s philosophy as the expression of a German Jew.

About William H. Weitzer: William H. Weitzer, Ph.D. became the executive director of the Leo Baeck Institute in January, 2013. Dr. Weitzer, formerly the Executive Vice President at Fairfield University in Connecticut, has over 30 years of experience in academic administration, budget and finance, fund raising, community relations, and program evaluation. The Leo Baeck Institute is a research library and archive that documents the history and culture of German-speaking Jewry, primarily in the 19th and 20th centuries, but also including documents dating back to the middle ages. It was founded in 1955 as a repository for the books, papers, photos and documents that were salvaged from Central Europe after World War II and donated to the Institute. Dr. Weitzer succeeded Carol Kahn Strauss, who has become the Institute’s International Director.

Presented by The Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin and The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education