Welcoming Remarks
Wolf Gruner, Founding Director of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research
Steve Ross, Director of the USC Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life
Stephen Smith, Finci-Viterbi Executive Director, USC Shoah Foundation
Originally from Germany, Wolf Gruner is a specialist for the research of the Holocaust and Central European Jewish history, topics on which he published ten books and around 70 articles and book chapters by now. Most recently, he published a prizewinning book on the Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia. He just finished an exciting decade-long research project on forgotten acts of individual defiance and protest of German and Austrian Jews in Nazi Germany. The soon to be published book will fundamentally revise our understanding of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Additional areas of research include the comparative history of mass violence and its resistance on a global scale, as well as racial and state discrimination against Indigenous and other minority populations, especially in Latin America. Since 2008, he is the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor of History at the University of Southern California. In 2014, Professor Gruner became the founding director of the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research (previously the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research). He is a member of the Academic Committee of the Unites States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, and co-founder of the National Consortium of Higher Education Centers for Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Studies.
Steven J. Ross is Professor of History at the University of Southern California and director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life. His most recent book, Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America was selected as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History for 2018; it was also on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller List for 12 weeks. His previous book, Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics, received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Film Scholars Award and was selected by the New York Times Book Review as a “Recommended Summer Readings” for 2012. Ross’ Op-Ed pieces have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, International Herald-Tribune, Hollywood Reporter, Huffington Post, Daily Beast, and Politico. He has lectured throughout the U.S. as well as in London, Paris, Sydney, and Auckland.