Making Global Connections

Scroll below for links to all of our recorded programs from the 2023-24 & 2024-25 academic years. You can also explore our curated YouTube playlists by clicking here.

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2024-25 Event Recordings

Holocaust Memory/Annual Kristallnacht Commemoration
2024 Kristallnacht Commemoration: Rethinking Antisemitism in Our Times
Recorded on November 11, 2024
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Against the backdrop of the troubling rise in antisemitism around the world, a complex debate about how to define what is known as the oldest hatred continues unabated. On the anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom that took place November 9 and 10, 1938, Dr. Magda Teter, Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies at Fordham University and one of the scholars consulted on President Biden’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, discusses the importance of rethinking how we study antisemitism, including what does and does not work.

KHC-NEH Lecture
Finding Home: Exploring the Cuban Jewish Experience in the Caribbean and the US
Recorded on October 30, 2024
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Join us for a rich and powerful conversation surrounding Cuba’s long Jewish history with Dr. Ruth Behar, a cultural anthropologist and published children’s book author who has spent her career studying and sharing her own personal experience navigating her identity as a Cuban Jew. The discussion will encompass the ways in which Jewish immigrants reckoned with the creation of their new homes and identities as they migrated from Europe to the Caribbean and the US. This event is part of the 2024-25 Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Colloquium, Circuitous Exchanges.

2023-24 Event Recordings

Holocaust Memory/Annual Yom HaShoah Commemoration
Nathan Hilu: Art as Memory After the Holocaust
Recorded on May 6, 2024
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For 70 years, Nathan Hilu was unable to stop drawing, flooded with memories from the days when the US military assigned him to guard top Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials, keeping them from committing suicide before their verdict was announced. Born to a Syrian Jewish family that immigrated to the States, Hilu remembered with vivid clarity the encounters that changed his life, but what really happened in Nuremberg? Did his vivid memories deceive him? To commemorate Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, join “Nathan-ism” documentary director Elan Golod and producer Melanie Levy for a discussion about the film and reflections on art as memory.

KHC-NEH Workshop
Pedagogical Strategies: Making History Visible in the Classroom
Recorded on April 17, 2024
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Join us for a workshop on pedagogical strategies that instructors can use in the community college classroom to make the past visible in the present through creative expression. Featuring Queensborough Community College-CUNY faculty Nicole McClam of Dance and Alison Cimino of English.

KHC-NEH Lecture
Genetic Discrimination: Exploring the Echoes between Nazi and American Eugenic Histories
Recorded on April 10, 2024
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When Adolf Hitler established the involuntary euthanasia program in 1939 codenamed Aktion T4, he empowered medical personnel throughout the Third Reich to sterilize and kill those deemed “unworthy of life.” Join Tiarra Maznick, Ph.D. Candidate and Teaching Associate at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, for a brief overview of the Nazi sterilization and euthanasia programs, and how these histories have functioned in/from American medical and political discourses. This event is part of the 2023-24 Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Colloquium, “Weaponizing the Past: Art, History and the Rhetoric of National Greatness.” 

KHC & QCC-CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium Partnership
Performance as Witness: Recognizing the Rhetoric that Leads to Violence
Recorded on April 2, 2024
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Join Dr. Alexander Hinton, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, and UNESCO Chair on Genocide Prevention at Rutgers University, for a discussion about how the rise of political extremism and hate speech contributes to a growing atmosphere of insecurity and dehumanization in our society. Dr. Hinton also reflects upon how the plays, “Julio Ain’t Goin Down Like That” and “Letters from Anne and Martin,” as well as the film, “BENT,” use performance to come to terms with antisemitism, transphobia, and racism. This event is part of a special collaboration between the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and the QCC-CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium in a semester-long project entitled “Performance as Prevention.” 

KHC-NEH Lecture  
Paragraph 175: The Contemporary Impact of Nazi-era Homophobia and Persecution
Recorded on March 20, 2024
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Paragraph 175 was an 1871 German statute criminalizing sexual relations between me. Predating the Nazi regime, it was revised in 1935 allowing the Nazis to persecute larger numbers of men more aggressively. Join Dr. Jake Newsome, Scholar and Author of Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming Out in the Shadow of the Holocaust, for a discussion about Paragraph 175’s significance, other Nazi-era attacks against the LGBTQIA+ community, as well as how this history is reflected in contemporary anti-transgender legislation. This event is part of the 2023-24 Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Colloquium, “Weaponizing the Past: Art, History and the Rhetoric of National Greatness.” 

KHC & QCC-CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium Partnership 
Outlawing Homosexuality in Nazi Germany: Reflections on the film, BENT
Recorded on March 19, 2024
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During the Holocaust, homosexual men imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps were required to wear inverted pink triangle badges on their uniforms, a symbol that was later reclaimed as an emblem of Gay Pride. Join Dr. Jake Newsome, Scholar and Author of Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming Out in the Shadow of the Holocaust, and Dr. Kerry Whigham, Assistant Professor of Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University and Co-Director of its Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, for a conversation about “BENT,” the 1979 play subsequently adapted for the big screen, which explores the persecution of Queer men in Nazi Germany, during and after the Night of Long Knives in 1934. This event is part of a special collaboration between the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and the QCC-CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium in a semester-long project entitled “Performance as Prevention.”

Human Rights and the Museum Series
Identity in Context: Building the American LGBTQ+ Museum
Recorded on March 14, 2024
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In a time when students and museum professionals are questioning the structures and even the founding principles of older museums and cultural institutions, this program looks at the more recent creation of the American LGBTQ+ Museum in New York City. Featuring Ben Garcia, the Museum’s Executive Director and Suhaly Bautista-Carolina, Director of Public Programs & Partnership. This event is part of the 2023-24 Human Rights and the Museum Series, a collaboration between the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and the Museum and Gallery Studies Program in the Art and Design Department at Queensborough Community College (QCC). 

QCC-CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium Partner Event
Art as Archive: Celebration and Protest
Recorded on February 22, 2024
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Dr. Laura Cohen, Executive Director of the Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center, moderates a discussion between documentarian filmmaker Richard Shpuntoff and playwright C. Julian Jiménez about the power of the arts as important archival sources. The conversation centers upon the importance of the LGBTQ Collection in the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives at LaGuardia Community College as a source of inspiration for Jiménez’s play, “Julio Ain’t Going Down Like That.” The play explores the community’s response to the brutal murder of Julio Rivera, a gay Puerto Rican man in Jackson Heights, Queens whose murder became the first gay hate crime tried in New York State during the 1990s.This event is part of a special collaboration between the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and the QCC-CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium in a semester-long project entitled “Performance as Prevention.” 

KHC-NEH Lecture
Uncomfortable Histories: From Nazi Book Burnings to Contemporary Book Bans
Recorded on February 14, 2024
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Join us for a conversation about the erasure of uncomfortable histories, beginning with an overview of the 1933 Nazi book burnings as part of Adolf Hitler’s plan to “cleanse” public discourse and participate in an “Action Against the Un-German Spirit.” Within this nationalist framework, our speakers will address the current drive to ban, censor, and eliminate texts from libraries and schools. Featuring Dr. Christina Dobbs, Assistant Professor and Program Director for English Education at Boston University and Dr. Eileen Chanza Torres, Associate Professor of English at Westminster University of Salt Lake City.

This event is part of the 2023-24 Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Colloquium, “Weaponizing the Past: Art, History and the Rhetoric of National Greatness.”

Holocaust Memory/International Holocaust Remembrance Day Commemoration
The Evian Conference and the Refugee Crisis: 85 Years Later 
Recorded on January 24, 2024
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In July 1938, international diplomats from 32 countries gathered in Evian-les-Bain, France to discuss the growing crisis of German and Austrian Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in the Reich. In commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Dr. Diane Afoumado, Chief of the Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, discusses the significance of the Evian Conference’s 85th anniversary. This talk was a collaboration between Queensborough Community College’s Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center and New York City College of Technology (City Tech)’s Ursula C. Schwerin Library in support of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s traveling exhibition, “Americans and the Holocaust” which examines how Americans reacted to Nazism, war, refugees, and genocide before and during the Second World War.  

KHC & New York City College of Technology (City Tech) Partnership
Racism, Eugenics & Antisemitism: Connections between Jim Crow and the Nuremberg Race Laws
Recorded on November 30, 2023
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Hitler and the Nazis looked to the US’s eugenics movement, Jim Crow laws, and culture of white supremacy in their quest to racialize European Jews, a policy that was first enshrined in the 1935 Nuremberg Race Laws. Join us for a conversation about the legal and political influences of America’s racial terrorism upon the Nazi’s genocidal policies featuring Tom White, Coordinator of Educational Outreach at the Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College. This talk was a collaboration between Queensborough Community College’s Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center and New York City College of Technology (City Tech)’s Ursula C. Schwerin Library in support of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s traveling exhibition, “Americans and the Holocaust” which examines how Americans reacted to Nazism, war, refugees, and genocide before and during the Second World War.   

Holocaust Memory/Annual Kristallnacht Commemoration
2023 Kristallnacht Commemoration: The State of Holocaust Education in the US Today
Recorded on November 9, 2023
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With antisemitism on the rise around the world, the demand for Holocaust education has become even more pressing. About half of the states in the US have mandated Holocaust education while museums and academic programs alike continue to expand their outreach to include other genocides and human rights issues. Yet, questions remain. Are these strategies working? Are they enough? How should Holocaust education relate to other forms of discrimination? Should we adjust our expectations? On the anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom that took place November 9 and 10, 1938, join us for a conversation about the state of Holocaust education featuring Dr. Oren Stier, Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Holocaust & Genocide Studies Program in the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs at Florida International University. 

KHC-NEH Lecture
Archives of Nostalgia: Exploring America’s Many Pasts
Recorded on November 1, 2023
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How do archival collections and their commercialization frame contemporary American narratives of belonging? Join us for this roundtable discussion examining the archives of nostalgic American pasts, including memorabilia related to antebellum, postwar affluence, and idealized suburbia. The conversation features Dr. Erin Thompson, Professor of Art Crimes at John Jay College of Criminal Justice-CUNY; Dr. Tim Keogh, Assistant Professor of History at Queensborough Community College (QCC)-CUNY; and Irvin Weathersby Jr., Lecturer of English at QCC-CUNY.

Human Rights and the Museum Series
Building and Sustaining Indigenous Cultural Institutions of Today
Recorded on October 24, 2023
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At a moment when museum professionals and cultural workers are questioning the structures and founding principles of older museums and cultural institutions that came out of earlier colonial contexts, this program looks at the more recent history of one organization which are largely dedicated to serving Indigenous populations. Join Jeremy Dennis, Photographer and Founder of Ma’s House for this timely discussion about how this site has made an impact on our local and national communities, as well as its broader connections to the work of Holocaust education museums.  

KHC & US Holocaust Memorial Museum Partnership/Holocaust Education
Integrating Holocaust Education into the Community College Classroom
Recorded on October 13, 2023
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Learn why a foundation in Holocaust education is vital to making connections between the past and the present, and how to do so addressing the unique needs of community college students. The program includes a discussion with faculty across various disciplines who have developed related pedagogy, an exploration of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s (USHMM) online resources, an introduction to the unique local resources of the Kupferberg. Holocaust Center, and a practical educator demo of these resources by a USHMM Museum Teacher Fellow.

KHC & QCC Welcome Read Partnership
Creating John Lewis’s March III: A Conversation with Nate Powell and Andrew Aydin
Recorded on October 4, 2023
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Join March: Book Three’s illustrator Nate Powell and editor Andrew Aydin who share insights and anecdotes about their time spent working on this graphic memoir series with Congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis. This event is part of the Queensborough Community College’s (QCC) Welcome Read, a pedagogical and community-building experience for Fall 2023 first semester Queensborough (QCC) students taking English classes, in both non-credit programs (CLIP and CUNY Start) and credited courses (ALP, ENGL101). The 2023 Welcome Read texts include March: Book One and March: Book Two, written by Civil Rights icon and Congressman John Lewis with Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell.