Campus Outreach Lecture Program

The Campus Outreach Lecture Program (COLP) provides college and university communities with a better understanding of the Holocaust's history, lessons, and relevance. Speakers are drawn from the Mandel Center’s staff and current and former visiting fellows from diverse disciplines and perspectives. COLPs are an invaluable resource for colleges and universities seeking to enhance Holocaust education and for communities concerned about the ongoing danger of discrimination, antisemitism, and Holocaust denial.

Below is an overview of possible COLP topics. We strongly encourage requests for lectures that serve more than one classroom on campus and/or more than one campus community through a collaborative approach between instructors.

Lecture Topics

• Science, Race, Eugenics, and Genocide: Experts situate the Holocaust in the larger framework of the history of ‘scientific racism,’ eugenics policies, and racial cleansing in Europe and beyond during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

• Antisemitism, Nazism, and the Holocaust: Experts provide an overview of the long history of antisemitism in Europe and beyond, using the Holocaust as a focal point for examining reoccurring tropes in literature, film, and media representation.

• Jewish Responses to the Holocaust: Experts introduce the history of the persecution of Jews as the largest victim group of the Nazis, as well as Jewish responses to the Holocaust and its aftermath.

• Marginalized Voices and Understudied Groups in Holocaust Studies: Experts introduce understudied groups that the Nazis systematically persecuted before and during World War II. Lecture topics include the persecution of Roma and Sinti, people with disabilities, and Soviet prisoners of war, among other groups.

• Gender and Sexuality in the Holocaust: Experts discuss the intersection of sexual violence and genocide, as well as queer history, women’s studies, and masculinity during the Holocaust.

• The Holocaust in Visual and Material Culture: Experts introduce cultural representations—including film, photography, and material culture sources—to discuss everyday life in Europe’s camps and ghettos, as well as the trauma and atrocity of the Holocaust.

• Citizenship, Refugees, and Displaced People during the Holocaust: Scholars introduce topics relating to citizenship, refugees, and displaced persons in the lead-up to and during World War II, as well as the history of everyday life in Europe’s displaced person camps after the war’s end.

• Memory and Memorialization of the Holocaust: Scholars address the various ways in which the victims of the Holocaust have been remembered and memorialized since 1945. In addition, they discuss the controversies and debates surrounding certain memorial projects.

• Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust: Experts explore the history of the churches' response to the Holocaust and how religious institutions, leaders, and theologians have addressed this history and its legacy since 1945. (Visit Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust for more information.)

To request a lecture on one of these topics, please complete the request form. For more information, please contact our team at campusoutreach@ushmm.org. 

For more information about our recorded lectures for classroom use, please visit our Online Lectures.