General Lectures

The Harris Center is proud to present a broad and varied program of lectures annually, free and open to the public. Upcoming events are listed on the Harris Center event calendar. To be added to our mailing list, write to hcjs@unl.edu.

In addition to our general lecture series, which brings a wide range of scholars, writers, artists, and public figures to the UNL campus, the Center presents speakers through six Endowed Lecture Series, made possible by the generosity of our friends in the community. The following is a partial list of events presented as part of the Harris Center’s general public programming over the past two decades.

Ari Ariel, University of Iowa

What Representations of Yemen Can Tell Us About Life in Israel
March 14, 2019

Sebouh Aslanian, University of California–Los Angeles

Comparative Reflection on Sephardic Jewish and Julfan Armenian Trade Diasporas in the Early Modern Period
March 15, 2018

Devin Naar, University of Washington

From the Ottoman Empire to Auschwitz: The Sephardic Jewish Experience of the Holocaust
March 1, 2018

Vladimir Vertlib Award-winning Austrian Jewish novelist and essayist

Trials and Tribulations of a Jewish Writer in German Speaking Lands
November 2013

Thomas Boghardt U.S. Army Intelligence

America’s use of Nazi war criminals to gather intelligence at the beginning of the Cold War
November 2013 | read more

Vicki Woeste Indiana University-Purdue
American Bar Foundation

Henry Ford's War Against Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech
February 2013

Gerald SteinacherUniversity of Nebraska, Lincoln

Escaping Nuremberg: How Nazi Perpetrators Fled Justice
November 2011

Gershon Kedar Israeli Deputy Consul General

Israel Behind the Headlines
February 2009

Mimi Schwartz Richard Stockton College of New Jersey

On her memoir, Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father’s German Village
November 2008

Scott Blakeman Political comedian

Stand Up for Peace
March 2008

Leonard Greenspoon Creighton University

It’s Okay to Laugh: Reading the Bible Through Comic Strips and the Daily Press
November 2006

James Shapiro Columbia University

The Jew's Daughter
November 2006

Michael Rips novelist and lawyer

Public reading, memoir, The Face of a Naked Lady
October 2006

Danny Lasker Ben Gurion University

Spinoza's Jewish Sources: Philosophy, Exegesis, Inter-Religious Polemics
September 2005

Nora Glickman Queens College

Fact to Fiction: The Reshaping of History in Latin American Jewish Literature
February 2005

Yehudi Lindeman McGill University

The Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Holland
September 2004

Jeff Spinner-Halev University of Nebraska

Israel After its Elections: What Is Next?
March 2003

Israel W. Charny Hebrew University, JERUSALEM
Institute of the Holocaust and Genocide

Denying the Holocaust, Armenian Genocide and Other Genocides: A Discussion and Classification of Types of Denial of Genocide
November 2002

Claudia Stevens Actress

An Evening with Madame F.
April 2002

Anne Wyatt-Brown University of Florida

Holocaust Literature and Memory
March 2002

Frederick Busch Colgate University

Public reading from his collection of short stories, Don’t Tell Anyone
April 2001

Daniel Boyarin UC Berkeley

Who's in a Name? Genealogies of Late Ancient Judaism
November 2000

Kenneth W. Stein Emory University

Middle East Conflict Resolution
November 2000

Mark Gelber Ben Gurion University

Jewish Life in Germany Today
October 2000

Peter Novick University of Chicago

Lessons of the Holocaust?
February 2000

Robert A. Warren Holocaust historian

In Search of the Holocaust: The Realization of Remembrance
November 1999

Henry Friedlander Brooklyn College

Medicine and the Holocaust: The Killing of the Disabled in Nazi Germany
April 1998

Susan Fromberg Schaeffer Novelist and poet

public reading
December 1997

Sharon Solwitz Novelist

public reading
October 1997

Abraham David HEBReW UNIVersity, Jerusalem

Returning To Zion: Jewish Pilgrim and Immigration Routes to
the Land of Israel During the 15th and 16th Centuries
October 1996

Sybil Milton United States Holocaust Museum

Art of the Holocaust
April 1996