In response to the recent executive order on immigration, the UConn Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life would like to share the following statement with our students and friends:

Since its founding in 1979, the Center for Judaic Studies has distinguished itself as a home for high-level academic and intellectual engagement. Core and affiliated faculty offer courses in ancient and modern Jewish history, literature, and culture, Holocaust studies and anti-Semitism, Israel studies, contemporary Jewish Studies, and all levels of Hebrew and Arabic language, literature, and civilization. Our students, like the UConn students generally, represent the rich diversity of religious, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds that have characterized and contributed to the history of the United States.

We believe the free and open exchange of ideas by people from diverse backgrounds forms the bedrock of academic and intellectual engagement. Whether we are teaching ancient or modern culture, we are committed to frank and fearless inquiry, to the honest interrogation of texts and to an appreciation for what they can teach us about ourselves and others, about human dreams and human failings, about the struggle we all share to find and make meaning that is about more than ourselves.

The Center for Judaic Studies rejects all forms of racial, religious, and national discrimination. We welcome students of all backgrounds, of all faiths, from all countries to join us in study.

Shalom Aleichem. Aleikum as-Salaam. Peace be upon you.

Nehama Aschkenasy

Anne Berthelot

Margaret Breen

Maha Darawsha

Arnold Dashefsky

Susan Einbinder

Lewis Gordon

Donna Hollenberg

Sara Johnson

Stuart Miller

Sherri Olson

Mark Overmyer-Velazquez

T. A. Perry

Bandana Purkayastha

Frederick Roden

Jeffrey Shoulson

Grae Sibelman

Joan Sidney

Richard Sosis

John Thames

Sarah Willen

Sebastian Wogenstein

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