Thursday, April 24th, 5:45-7:15 pm, James Madison College Library,  332 Case Hall, 842 Chestnut Rd.

Despite the triumphalist tale that during the Nazi era the United States rescued Europe’s intellectual elite–including Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Hannah Arendt, and Herbert Marcuse–thousands of European scholars sought to immigrate to the United States and couldn’t. American universities refused to hire them and the State Department erected barriers to letting them in. Many of those scholars lost not only their livelihoods, but also their lives. This lecture will introduce a few of those scholars and describe American universities’ process for deciding who was worth saving.

Laurel Leff is Professor of Journalism and Associate Director of Jewish Studies at Northeastern University. Her book, Well Worth Saving: American Universities’ Life and Death Decisions on Refugees from Nazi Europe (Yale University Press) was a finalist for a 2020 National Jewish Book Award. Her previous book, Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper (Cambridge University Press) was chosen as the Best Media History Book of 2005 by the American Journalism Historians’ Association and Best History Book of 2005 by ForeWord Reviews. Leff has a master’s in the study of law from Yale University and a master’s in communications from the University of Miami. She received an A.B. from Princeton University with a major in the School of Public and International Affairs. She was formerly a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and The Miami Herald and an editor with American Lawyer Media Inc. and The Hartford Courant.