Media

Recently, Naomi Seidman, Director of the Center for Jewish Studies, traveled to Warsaw in commemoration of the uprising and the publication of her father's diary into Polish. Upon her return, the j profiled the important work her father did. An excerpt follows:

“My father was the archivist of the pre-war Warsaw Jewish community,” Seidman said in an interview. “He wrote in Polish, Hebrew and Yiddish, and was a Ph.D. of Jewish history.”

The staff of the Flora Lamson Hewlett Library recently received some public recognition by the son of Robert McAfee Brown for their work in collecting and preserving his personal library. The Letter to the Editor, printed in the New York Times, is included below.

To the Editor:

Izak Lattu, a doctoral student in Interdisciplinary Studies, denounces changes by the Indonesian government which oppress practioners of indigenous religion.

"Although indigenous faiths such as Sunda Wiwitan, Kejawen and other forms of traditional beliefs represent local ways of addressing the Ultimate Reality, they nonetheless encounter discrimination on a political basis....

Izak Lattu, doctoral student in Interdisciplinary Studies, explains how the actions of one Indonesian politician marks the exception to the general principle of religious tolerance in the country for which it is revered.

"It has been years of agony for GKI Taman Yasmin Protestant church congregation members as Bogor Mayor Diani Budiarto has defied a Supreme Court decision to allow them to attend Sunday mass in their place of worship.

Budiarto’s bureaucratic move reflects the failure of not only law enforcement in the city, but also of the country’s civil justice system....

Izak Lattu, a doctoral student in Interdisciplinary Studies, speaks against acts of violence perpetrated in the name of religion.

Sasha Goldberg (M.A. Judaism '09) heads the new Bay Area office of Keshet, a Jewish LGBT group. Prior to her new position, she was associate director at Nehirim which runs retreats for LGBT Jews. Goldberg is also a consultant on LGBT issues.

The College of the Holy Cross (Worchester, Mass.) has selected Rev. Philip L. Boroughs, S.J., as the College’s 32nd president beginning January 2012. He graduated in 1989 with a Ph.D. in Christian Spirituality from the Graduate Theological Union. His doctoral dissertation was on John Woolman (1720-1772), the itinerant Quaker preacher in Colonial America, who advocated against slavery and whose journal is considered a spiritual classic. Fr. Boroughs also holds a Licentiate of Sacred Theology from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley.

The Rev. Thomas J. Ferguson will become the dean of Bexley Hall, an Episcopal Church-affiliated seminary. Since 2010, he has served as the Episcopal Church's ecumenical and interreligious relations officer working to foster ecumenical and interreligious dialogue and cooperation with other Christian communions and world religions. He is also the part-time chaplain of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.