What are the Lessons for Democracy Today?

Jeremi sits down with Professors Tatjana Lichtenstein and Michael Stoff to talk about World War II and its lasting implications on our democracy.

As always, Zachary kicks things off with his poem, “Jerusalem.”

Tatjana Lichtenstein holds degrees from the University of Toronto (Ph.D.), Brandeis University (MA), and the University of Copenhagen (BA/MA).  Before coming to UT in 2009, she was a Schusterman Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish studies at American University in Washington, D.C.  Since September 2017, she is director of the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies here at UT. Dr. Lichtenstein’s research focuses on minorities, nationalism, state-building, war, and genocide in Eastern Europe in the twentieth century.  Her monograph, Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia: Minority Nationalism and the Politics of Belonging, was published by Indiana University Press in 2016.  It explores how Zionist activists attempted to transform Jewish culture and society in ways that would allow Jews to claim to belong in the new multinational state.

Michael B. Stoff received his B.A. from Rutgers College and Ph.D. from Yale University. He is currently an Associate Professor of History, University Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor, and an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer.  For over a decade, he has been the director of the nationally acclaimed Plan II Honors Program at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Oil, War and American Security, co-editor of The Manhattan Project: A Documentary Introduction to the Atomic Age, series co-editor of The Oxford New Narratives in American History, and co-author of five American history textbooks. He has been honored many times for his teaching, most recently with the UT system-wide Regents Outstanding Teaching Award. In 2015, he was recognized for his contributions to induction into the Philosophical Society of Texas. He is at work on a book about Nagasaki and the meaning of the atomic bomb.