Edgar Bronfman, Sr., president of the World Jewish Congress, delivers a public lecture on "Creating a Renaissance in Jewish Life," as part of the Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies at 4 P.M. on Thursday, May 3 in the UCSB Hatlen Theater. This event is being held in conjunction with the grand opening of the Milton Roisman Jewish Student Center.

Bronfman joined Distillers Corporation-Seagrams Limited in 1951. He became president of Distillers Corporation-Seagrams Limited in 1971 and chairman in 1975. In 1994, he relinquished the position of chief executive officer to his son, Edgar Bronfman, Jr. He served as chairman of the Seagram Company Ltd. until its merger into Vivendi Universal in 2000.

Bronfman is the president of the World Jewish Congress, an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations whose primary goal is to preserve and foster the worldwide unity of the Jewish people and to protect and nourish their spiritual, cultural and social heritage. He is also the president of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, which is devoted to ensuring the return of communal Jewish property after it was stolen first by the Nazis and them by the communists in Eastern Europe, and property in Western Europe also stolen by the Nazis
and unaccounted for. The WIRO is involved with seeing justice done in the case of the Swiss banks and other institutions throughout Europe that were depositories of Jewish wealth during the 1939-1945 period and whose owners perished in the Holocaust. Further, he is chairman of the Foundation for Jewish Campus Life (Hillel), a world-wide organization uniting Jewish students on college and university campuses. In addition to his role in the World Jewish Congress and Hillel, Bronfman's philanthropic and civic activities include serving as chairman of both The Samuel Bronfman Foundation and the United States Commission on Holocaust Era Assets.

In 1999, President Clinton awarded Bronfman the Presidential Metal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor. That same year, Bronfman received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters form the University of Rochester. In 1997, he received form New York University an honorary degree of Doctor of Commercial Science and, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an Honorary Doctor Philosophiae Honoris Causa. In 1995, the A.B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University conferred upon Bronfman an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws.

In 1986, he received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from Williams College and was awarded the Chevalier de la Legion D'Honneur by the government of France, as well as the Justice Louis D. Brandeis Award of the 85th National Convention of the Zionist Organization of America. In 1982, Bronfman was also awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters by Pace University in New York City.

Bronfman attended Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario, Canada; Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts; and was graduated with a bachelor's degree from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, in 1951.

The Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies are co-sponsored by UCSB Arts & Lectures, Department of Religious Studies, Hillel, and Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.