The School of Law and the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at The University of Texas at Austin will co-sponsor two lectures by Michael R. Marrus, an expert in the Holocaust, law and history at the University of Toronto, on April 22 and 23. Both talks are free and open to the public.
The M. Harvey Weil Centennial Lectureship presents “Some Measure of Justice: Re-Examining the Holocaust Era Restitution Campaign of the 1990s,” on Thursday, April 22, at 6 p.m. in the School of Law’s Eidman Courtroom. In this lecture, Marrus will reflect on the Holocaust-era restitution campaign of the 1990s, drawing upon his recently published book on the subject. At the heart of his talk is a seldom-asked question: How does the recent encounter of the Holocaust with the law affect our historical understanding of the Jewish catastrophe?
Marrus delivers his second lecture, titled “Saint-making: Pope Pius XII, the Catholic Church and the Jews,” on Friday, April 23, at the University of Texas at Austin campus in Garrison Hall, Room 1.102 at noon. This lecture investigates what has irreverently been referred to as the “Pius Wars,” the highly politicized campaign to make the wartime pope, Pius XII, into a saint. Marrus will pose these questions: What are the implications of this campaign for Catholics? And for Jews?
Marrus is the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor Emeritus of Holocaust Studies in the Department of History, adjunct professor of law and former dean of graduate studies at the University of Toronto. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Member of the Order of Canada, he teaches courses in law and history. He has been a visiting fellow of St. Antony’s College, Oxford and the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has taught as a visiting professor at UCLA and the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
He is the author of, among other books, “The Politics of Assimilation: French Jews at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair,” “Vichy France and the Jews” (with Robert Paxton), “The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century,” “The Holocaust in History” and “The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 1945-46.” His most recent book is entitled “Some Measure of Justice: The Holocaust Era Restitution Campaign of the 1990s.”
The M. Harvey Weil Centennial Lectureship was established in 1982 by M. Harvey Weil, who was then the senior managing partner of the Corpus Christi law firm of Kleberg, Dyer, Redford and Weil (which later became known as Kleberg and Head). This endowed lectureship enables the School of Law to invite a distinguished member of the legal community to speak at the Law School each year.
The Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies provides a multi-disciplinary Jewish studies curriculum for students at The University of Texas at Austin, extensive and innovative public programming on Jewish culture and an innovative crossroads for research on the study of Jewish life in the Americas, its place in Jewish history and its contemporary and future relationship to the State of Israel.
