Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Boston University Professor, will deliver a public lecture as part of the Arthur N. Rupe Distinguished Dialogue Series at UCSB. Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, copies of his book swill be available for purchase and signing at this event.

The Arthur N. Rupe Distinguished Dialogue Series is presented by the College of Letters and Science, UCSB Arts & Lectures, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center. This event is being cosponsored by the Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies and put on in partnership with the Santa Barbara Jewish Federation.

Elie Wiesel

Nobel Peace Prize winner and Boston University Professor Elie Wiesel has worked on behalf of oppressed people for much of his adult life. His personal experience of the Holocaust has led him to use his talents as an author, teacher and storyteller to defend human rights and peace throughout the world.

Wiesel's efforts have earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States Congressional Gold Medal and the Medal of Liberty Award, the rank of Grand Officer in the French Legion of Honor, and in 1986, the Nobel Peace Prize. He has received more than ninety honorary degrees from institutions of higher learning.

In 1978, President Fumy Carter appointed him Chairman of the President's Commission on the Holocaust. In 1980 he became Founding Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Elie Wiesel is also the Founding President of the Paris based Universal Academy of Cultures.

His more than forty books have won numerous awards, including the Prix Medics for A Beggar in Jerusalem, the Prix Livre Inter for The Testament and the Grand Prize for Literature from the City of Paris for The Fifth Son. The first volume of Wiesel's memoirs, All Rivers Run to the Sea, was published in New York (Knopf) in December, 1995. The second volume, Et la mer n'est pas remplie, published in Paris (Le Seuil) in 1996, was published in English, And the sea is never full, in New York (Knopf) in late 1999.

A native of Sighet, Transylvania (Romania), Wiesel and his family were deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz when he was fifteen years old. His mother and younger sister perished there, la two older sisters waived. Wiesel and his father were later transported to Buchenwald, where his father died.

After the war, Wiesel studied in Paris and later became a journalist in that city, yet he remained silent about what he had endured as an inmate in the death camps. During an interview with the French writer Francios Mauriac, Wiesel was persuaded to end that silence. He subsequently wrote La Nuit (Night). Since its publication in 1958, La Nuit has been translated into twenty-five languages and millions of copies have been sold.

A devoted supporter of Israel Wiesel has also defended the cause of Soviet Jews, Nicaragua's Miskito Indians, Argentina's "disappeared," Cambodian refugees, the Kurds, South African apartheid victims, famine victims in Africa, and more recently the victims and prisoners in the former Yugoslavia.

Three months after he received the Nobel Peace Prize, Marion and Elie Wiesel established The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Its mission is to advance the cause of human rights and peace throughout the world by creating a new forum for the discussion of urgent ethical issues confronting humanity.

The first major project undertaken by the Foundation was an international conference of Nobel Laureates convened jointly by Elie Wiesel and French President Francois Mitterrand. Seventy-nine Laureates from five continents met in January 1988 in Paris to explore issues and questions related to the conference theme, "Facing the 21st Century: Threats and Promises."

This was followed by conferences on "The Anatomy of Hate," first in Boston, cosponsored by Boston University (1989), in Haifa, co-sponsored by Haifa University (1990), in Oslo, co-sponsored by the Norwegian Nobel Committee (1990), and in Moscow, co-sponsored by Ogonyok Magazine (1991). In November, 1992, a conference on "The Anatomy of Hate: Saving our Children," co-sponsored by Mario M. Cuomo, Governor of the State of New York was held at New York University.

In May, 1995, the Elie Wiesel Foundation sponsored a young people's conference on international understanding, "Tomorrow's Leaders," which met in Venice, and, in December 1995, a conference on "The Future of Hope," co-sponsored by Asahi Shimbun, Japan's prominent daily, was held in Tokyo and Hiroshima. In September 1997, an international conference "Forum 2000" took place in Prague, co-chaired by President Vaclav Havel ad Elie Wiesel.

Elie Wiesel has been Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies at the City University of New York (1972~-1976), and first Henry Luce Visiting Scholar in the Humanities and Social Thought at Yale University (1982-1983). Since 1976, he has been the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University where he also holds the title of University Professor. He is a member of the Faculty in the Department of Religion as well as the Department of Philosophy.

An American citizen since 1963, Elie Wiesel lives in New York with his wife and son.

For additional information on the Arthur N. Rupe Distinguished Dialogue Series at UCSB, visit http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/events/endowed/rupe.html