Leadership

Dr. Sandra Alfers

Dr. Alfers is the founding director of The Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity and Professor of German and in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at Western Washington University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2003 and has worked at Western since 2008. In 2013, the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG) designated Western’s German program a “National Center of Excellence.”

Dr. Alfers teaches a broad range of German language, culture, and literature courses on all levels of the curriculum. Recently, she has explored the uses of new technologies in the L2 classroom; she developed a German mobile application as well as an online textbook for her third-year literature class. In her research, Dr. Alfers focuses on the literature of the Holocaust, particularly on German-language poetry written in Theresienstadt between 1941-1945. Her English- and German-language publications have appeared in international journals such as Monatshefte, Oxford German Studies, and Études Arméniennes Contemporaines, and her work on Theresienstadt has been translated into Czech for Terezínské Studie A Dokumenty. Dr. Alfers’ book on the German-Jewish activist and writer Else Dormitzer weiter schreiben. Leben und Lyrik der Else Dormitzer was published in late 2015 by Hentrich & Hentrich in Berlin, Germany. She is a member of the academic council of the Holocaust Educational Foundation at Northwestern University. In 2018, she was  named a recipient of the 2018 Rep. Timm Ormbsy Award for Faculty Citizenship. Now in its fifth year, the Ormsby award was created to encourage, recognize, and honor exemplary civic engagement by faculty from each of the six public baccalaureates in Washington state.

Dr. Babafemi Akinrinade

Dr. Babafemi Akinrinade is a Professor of Human Rights at Fairhaven College at Western Washington University. His teaching and research focus on International Law, International and Regional Human Rights, the Holocaust and Mass Atrocities, Transitional Justice, and the Political and Socio-economic relations of African States. He teaches in the Law, Diversity and Justice Program of Fairhaven College and co-coordinates the World Issues Forum of Fairhaven College. Previously, Dr. Akinrinade taught for the University of Chicago’s Human Rights Program and Center for International Studies (2006-2008) and was a Lecturer in Law at the Faculty of Law, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria (1992-2002).

Dr. Akinrinade was an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow, Sawyer Seminar on Comparative Truth and Reconciliation Processes, within the Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago (2003-2004). He is the author of Atrocity Crimes, Atrocity Law and Justice in Africa (Eleven International Publishing, 2021) and Human Rights and State Collapse in Africa (Eleven International Publishing, 2009).

Dr. Akinrinade has participated in the 2015 Jack and Anita Hess Faculty Seminar, the 2018 Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust Faculty Seminar, and the 2021 Curt C. and Else Silberman Virtual Seminar for Faculty (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C.), the 2017 Auschwitz Jewish Center Fellows Program (the Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York), and the 2014 Holocaust Educational Foundation’s Summer Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization (Northwestern University, Evanston, IL).