Building Democratic Resilience By Facing the Past

Why Learn About the Holocaust & Crimes Against Humanity? How do these topics apply to our everyday lives and professional behavior? Why must healthy democracies face difficult history? How? 

This presentation offers guiding thoughts on how to frame discussion and create safe space for differing points of view. How do we identify implicit biases that may hinder our ability to raise important questions? How do stories of survivors and witnesses help us navigate our lives and shape our decisions? What role do leaders play in creating safe and productive environments while promoting democratic values and norms? What is permissible depends on us. By facing difficult history, we build the power of democratic resilience.

Democratic Resilience vs. Fascist Fear: Facing Challenges in an Imperfect Republic

How did FDR’s “missionary generation” respond to the threat of anti-democratic (and even Nazi) leaders at home and Nazism abroad? Why is antisemitism a threat to all? Why was fascism a threat in the 1930s? How did American democracy confront and reject the appeal of totalitarian solutions in the 1930s? What is the difference between democracy and fascism?  How does a difficult past help us find resilience in the struggle to preserve democracy?

Eugenics: Bigotry Disguised as Biology

Eugenics was a 19^th-20^th century movement to purify and strengthen the white race. It grew in the intellectual circles of countries such as the United Kingdom and Germany that were determined to deal with an “enemy” (socially and racially) from within. How did this race-based, elitist, antidemocratic, and antisemitic ideology become a mainstream idea in popular culture, politics, and law in the United States? What were the connections to and differences between American eugenic and Nazi German “race hygiene” practices? How did American ideas about race influence Nazi German thinkers?

This presentation will explore to what degree Nazi race law, marriage law, forced sterilization, the Nuremberg Laws, and other “race hygiene” practices were informed by eugenic ideas and American precedents such as Jim Crow. Although Americans began to reject eugenics in the 1930s and the ideology was debunked as bad science, what lingering effects does it still have today?

How does confronting the difficult history of eugenics help us confront the threat of racism and white supremacy without using labels to isolate and radicalize those who think hate is the answer?