Our Committees

The Steering Committee acts as an executive back-end of the GHSCN. Our Steering Committee, made up of 15-20 members, will serve 2 year terms, with some serving only 1 year to start so as to stagger membership. The Steering Committee will be led by two Co-Facilitators who will serve one year terms. We have members from many disciplines, including those outside of Genocide studies, and encourage cross disciplinary cooperation. The Steering Committee must approve all new working groups. Most network actions are organized through working groups, which will change with need and with time. 

The Steering Committee is made up of the following members:

• Taner Akçam, Director of the Armenian Genocide Research Program, Promise Armenian Institute, UCLA

• Omer Bartov, Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Brown University

• Frank Biess, Professor of History, Rita Atkinson Chair in German Studies, UC-San Diego

• Debórah Dwork, Director, Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity, Graduate Center— CUNY

• Atina Grossmann, Professor of History, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Cooper Union

• Wolf Gruner, Professor of History, Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies, Founding Director, Center for Advanced Genocide Research, University of Southern California

• Marianne Hirsch, Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and Gender Studies, Columbia University

• Brett Ashley Kaplan, Director of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

• Shira Klein, Associate Professor of History, Chapman University

• Eric Kurlander, William R. Kenan Jr Professor of History and Director of Jewish Studies, Stetson University

• Nitzan Lebovic, Professor of History and Holocaust Studies, Lehigh University

• Michael Rothberg, Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Holocaust Studies, UCLA

• Raz Segal, Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Stockton University

• Sarah Stein, Distinguished Professor of History, UCLA

• Frances Tanzer, Associate Professor of History, Rose Professor of Holocaust Studies and Jewish Culture, Clark University

• Barry Trachtenberg, Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish Studies, Wake Forest University

• Johanna Ray Vollhardt, Associate Professor of Psychology, Clark University

• Ran Zwigenberg, Associate Professor of Asian Studies, History, and Jewish Studies, Pennsylvania State University

And others...

The communications group is working on letters, petitions, and statements. So far, we have circulated this letter, which now has more than 1,000 signatures (1019, and counting). The letter is a call for university administrators to stop adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism. We are looking for committee members with contacts to wide-circulation newspapers and magazines, and with public-facing writing skills. 

The institutional outreach WG seeks to hold prominent institutions in Holocaust and Genocide Studies accountable for addressing current crises caused by the instrumentalization of the Holocaust and antisemitism accusations and for addressing the rise of authoritarian political movements around the world. The outreach group organized a letter calling the AJS (Association of Jewish Studies) leadership to distance the organization from the IHRA definition of antisemitism; we also started planning a series of events in/next to large conferences (GSA, AHA) that will stress critical matters such as the weaponization of antisemitism, and how such organizations can and should contribute to this effort. We seek especially members who know these and other organizations from within, and/or those who can help the organization and outreach efforts. 

The solidarity with scholars at risk working group has three main goals: (1) establishing a "Trusted Faculty" network that may offer advice to colleagues who face repression; (2) assembling a list of resources on responses to Antisemitism accusations, for instance in the case of colleagues whose syllabi are checked for alleged Antisemitism; (2) connecting with Palestinian colleagues and organizations such as Palestine Studies, Palestinian Feminist Collective, Academy for Equaluty. We plan to establish connections with organizations who work with scholars at risk such as the New University inExile Consortium. We hope to develop multiple solidarities as circumstances necessitate. The types of experience and expertise we are looking for: for participants to offer more ways to act in solidarity that we have not yet envisioned. 

The main focus of this group is the creation of a series of pedagogical resources which can serve as alternatives to those provided by existing institutions. Beyond antisemitism, we want to create resources about genocide and memory and more generally with an initial focus on the following 5 subjects: Comparative Genocide, The Politics of Memory, Antisemitism and Racism, The Holocaust: History and Representation, The Holocaust and the Nakba. We could use the expertise of anyone who has worked in these fields as well as people with design skills to create the actual resources. 

Works with the above groups to format the network's website, Google Drive, email list, and more to make sure everything organizationally is running well. Could use the assistance of anyone with experience in the above or backend management generally.

We are looking for members with experience creating promotional materials, or running social media accounts or campaigns to help make our organization more visible.