On Wednesday, October 25, 2017, we welcomed to Bellingham Dr. Mark Weitzman, Director of Government Affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Chief Representative of the SWC to the United Nations in New York. Weitzman presented, to a full house, “Defining Antisemitism and Why it Matters.” His visit was made possible by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Equal Opportunity Office, the Provost’s Office, the Ray Wolpow Institute, University Residences, and Western Libraries.
Dr. Weitzman is a member of the official US delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Authority (IHRA) where he chairs the Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial. Weitzman spearheaded IHRA’s recent adoption of the Working Definition of Antisemitism, which is the first definition of antisemitism with any formal status. Weitzman was the lead author of IHRA’s Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion, which was adopted by the 31 member countries of IHRA.
Currently, Dr. Weitzman is a participant in the program on Religion and Foreign Policy of the Council on Foreign Relations. Weitzman is a board member and former Vice-President of the Association of Holocaust Organizations and was a member of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy advisory board at Yale University. Weitzman is a longtime member of the official Jewish-Catholic Dialogue Group of New York.
The author of numerous publications, Weitzman co-edited “Antisemitism, The Generic Hatred: Essays in Memory of Simon Wiesenthal,” which won the 2007 National Jewish Book Award in the category of anthologies. He is also the co-author of “Dismantling the Big Lie: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
For a video recording of Dr. Mark Weitzman’s talk, please visit Western’s CEDAR website.