Ithaca College

The inaugural Peggy R. Williams Difficult Dialogues Symposium will be held on Wednesday, October 7, at 8:00 p.m. in Emerson Suites, Phillips Hall. The program will feature Marc Ellis, director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Baylor University, and Sanford Gutman, professor emeritus of history at SUNY Cortland. It is free and open to the public.

The symposium is named in honor of President Emerita Peggy R. Williams, who has been an advocate for dialogue about complex and controversial issues of the time and a staunch defender of academic freedom and active, open inquiry.

Ellis has written and spoken extensively about the complexity of modern Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations and how they are intertwined with the politics of the United States and Israel. His books include “Ending Auschwitz: The Future of Jewish and Christian Life,” “Unholy Alliance: Religion and Atrocity in Our Time” and, most recently, “Judaism Does Not Equal Israel.”

Currently a visiting professor of Near Eastern studies at Cornell University, Gutman spent 37 years on the faculty of SUNY Cortland. His scholarship focuses on the French Revolution and the history of Jews in France, and his deep interest in the interlocking subjects of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and the Arab-Israeli conflict has led to many publications and public speaking engagements.