Elie Wiesel

Professor Elie Wiesel has been appointed honorary president of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), it was announced recently by ISGAP Director Charles Small.
“Given Professor Wiesel’s experience and his achievements at so many levels; given what he and his generation experienced; given the rapidly changing dynamics of global realities and the threat that antisemitism poses locally and certainly globally; clearly Professor Wiesel’s association with ISGAP will help greatly in our efforts to assess the contemporary challenges of antisemitism from an interdisciplinary scholarly perspective, to develop policy approaches to confront this scourge, and to help raise the caliber of public discourse, with a sense of urgency,” said Small in announcing Wiesel’s appointment.
“Professor Wiesel has been the leading voice of survivors of the Shoah (Holocaust), and for humanity and decency in general for decades. His wisdom and humility, his writings and scholarship, his actions on the personal to the political levels, serve as an example for those of us concerned for the state of the world, human rights, scholarship and the struggle to combat – yes combat – antisemitism.”
Born in 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania, which is now part of Romania. Wiesel was 15 years old when he and his family were deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz. His mother and younger sister perished, his two older sisters survived. Elie and his father were later transported to Buchenwald, where his father died. He later wrote about his experiences in the death camps in the internationally acclaimed memoir, “Night” (La Nuit).
The recipient of more than 100 honorary degrees from institutions of higher learning, Wiesel is a strong supporter of Israel, and has also defended the cause of Soviet Jews, Nicaragua’s Miskito Indians, Argentina’s Desaparecidos, Cambodian refugees, the Kurds, victims of famine and genocide in Africa, of apartheid in South Africa, and victims of war in the former Yugoslavia. He and his wife Marion have been especially devoted to the cause of Ethiopian-born Israeli youth through the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity’s Beit Tzipora Centers for Study and Enrichment.
Since 1976, he has been the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University. Previously, he served as Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies at the City University of New York (1972-76) and the first Henry Luce Visiting Scholar in Humanities and Social Thought at Yale University (1982-83).
The author of more than fifty books, Wiesel is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal, the National Humanities Medal, the Medal of Liberty, and the rank of Grand-Croix in the French Legion of Honor. In 1986, he won the Nobel Prize for Peace. Soon after, Wiesel and his wife, Marion, established The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity (www.eliewieselfoundation.org).