Read About the Panelists for Antisemitism on the Internet and Social Media
Mark Weitzman is Chief Operating Officer of the World Jewish Restitution Organization. Previously he was Director of Government Affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center. He is a member of the official US delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Authority (IHRA) where he chaired the Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial and the Working Group on Holocaust Museums and Memorials and spearheaded IHRA’s 2016 adoption of the Working Definition of Antisemitism. He was also the lead author of IHRA’s Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion, which was adopted by IHRA in 2013.
Mr. Weitzman is currently co-editing the Routledge History of Antisemitism, scheduled for publication in 2022. He recently contributed the chapters “Traditionalism or the Perennial Philosophy: Religionism, Politics, and the New Right” to the volume Contending with Antisemitism in a Rapidly Changing Political Climate and “Antisemitism in Social Media and on the Web” to the Cambridge Companion to Antisemitism. He was a winner of the 2007 National Jewish Book Award for best anthology for Antisemitism, the Generic Hatred: Essays in Memory of Simon Wiesenthal, which has appeared in French, Spanish and Russian editions.
Mr. Weitzman is a participant in the program on Religion and Foreign Policy of the Council on Foreign Relations, served as a member of the advisory panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and co-chaired the Working Group on International Affairs of the Global Forum on Antisemitism. He currently serves as Vice-President of the Association of Holocaust Organizations.
Dr. Michael Berenbaum directs the Sigi Ziering Institute, which explores the ethical and religious implications of the Holocaust. The Institute is located at American Jewish University in California, where he is also a professor of Jewish studies. Additionally, he is a writer, lecturer and teacher consulting in the conceptual development of museums and films.
In 2015, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum honored Dr. Berenbaum with its National Leadership Award for his decades of service and contributions to Holocaust memory and education. From 1988 to 1993, Dr. Berenbaum oversaw the creation of the Museum, serving as project director, and later was director of the US Holocaust Research Institute at the Museum, now the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. Dr. Berenbaum served as deputy director of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, which led to creating the Museum. Starting in 1997, he served for three years as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, now the USC Shoah Foundation.
Dr. Berenbaum has authored or edited 22 books, scores of scholarly articles and hundreds of journalistic pieces. His books include The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; After Tragedy and Triumph: Modern Jewish Thought and the American Experience; Not Your Father’s Antisemitism: Hatred of the Jews in the 21st Century and Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis. In film, Dr. Berenbaum co-produced One Survivor Remembers: The Gerda Weissmann Klein Story, which received an Emmy Award in 1995 and an Academy Award in 1996. He has been a historical consultant on numerous other films and documentaries.
A graduate of Queens College and Florida State University, Dr. Berenbaum also attended The Hebrew University, the Jewish Theological Seminary and Boston University. He has won numerous fellowships and was given a Doctor of Divinity (honoris causa) from Nazareth College and a Doctor of Humane Letter (honoris causa) from Denison University.
