117th Commencement Exercises May 19, 2011 - The Jewish ...

honorary degrees
Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt
Doctor of Hebrew Letters, honoris causa
Sponsored by
Mr. Yale Asbell
Dr. Stefanie B. Siegmund
Acclaimed author, foremost expert on Holocaust denial, modern anti-Semitism, and the
Eichmann trial, your groundbreaking work preserves and defends the sacred memory of the
Shoah in the face of malevolent attempts to deny the reality of this immense national catastrophe.
You are currently Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University
in Atlanta, where you created the Institute for Jewish Studies. As an academic, you have won
numerous awards for your teaching in addition to the many scholarly honors you have earned for
your important research illuminating how America reacted to the persecution of European Jewry
during the Holocaust era, and how there are those today who, by distorting history, seek to harm
the Jewish people. Your book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth And Memory, the
first full-length study of its subject, is universally acclaimed and has been published around the
world. David Irving sued you for calling him a Holocaust denier, and put not only your work, but the
factuality of the Holocaust itself, on trial. You have earned the admiration and gratitude of Jews
the world over for your courageous and successful stance in the libel suit. Your writings have won
such distinctions as the National Jewish Book Award and widespread accolades from publishers
and reviewers, and you are a frequent contributor to and widely quoted in major newspapers.
President Clinton appointed you to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, and you helped
design the Holocaust Memorial Museum’s section dedicated to the American response to the
Shoah. Members of Congress have called upon you to consult on political responses to Holocaust
denial, and you have served on the United States State Department Advisory Committee on Religious
Freedom Abroad. President George W. Bush invited you to join a small delegation representing the
White House at the 60th anniversary commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz. As a fellow of
the American Academy of Jewish Research, nominated and elected by your peers, you are justly
counted among the most distinguished scholars of Judaic studies at American universities.
In your extraordinary contributions to Jewish scholarship, the United States, and contemporary
Jewish life, you stand for truth in the face of falsehood, shining forth a light against darkness.
4