Contributors

Dr. Navras J. Aafreedi (Guest-Editor), Assistant Professor, Department of History, Presidency University, Kolkata, is an Indo-Judaic Studies scholar who teaches a postgraduate course in genocide studies among several other courses. He has to his credit the first ever Holocaust films retrospective in South Asia, which he held in 2009 at the universities in Lucknow, a major centre of Muslim scholarship, a couple of international multidisciplinary conferences (2016 and 2017 respectively) on genocide studies, one of which he organised with a couple of colleagues and the other singularly, and several Holocaust photographic exhibitions. Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar on Holocaust and Genocide Education and participant in panel discussions on Holocaust education at conferences at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem (2012), the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC (2013, 2015, and 2017), and the Global Forum of the American Jewish Committee, Washington, DC (2016), he has given lectures and presented papers on the Holocaust at scholarly forums in Canada, India, the United Kingdom, and the Unites States. The theme of one of the three issues of Café Dissensus that he has guest edited in the past was “India’s Response to the Holocaust and its Perception of Hitler”. He has held visiting fellowships at the Tel Aviv University (2006-2007), the Woolf Institute, Cambridge, UK (2010), and the University of Sydney (2013 and 2015), and been peer advisor to the International University of Rabat, Morocco in 2017 to help it develop a new postgraduate degree programme in “Conflict Resolution and Governance of Peace”. His numerous publications include his book Jews, Judaizing Movements and the Traditions of Israelite Descent in South Asia (2016).

Professor Sarva Daman Singh, B.A.(HONS.), M.A., PH.D. (UNIVERSTY OF LONDON), PH.D. (UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA), F.R.A.S., was born in India; and migrated to Australia in 1974.  He won many awards and five gold medals during the course of a distinguished educational career at the universities of Lucknow and London.  He has taught at the University of Lucknow; National Academy of Administration, Government of India, Mussoorie; Vikram University, Ujjain; and the University of Queensland, Australia; and held chairs of Indian History, Culture and Archaeology.  He is at present Director of the Institute of Asian Studies, Brisbane.  He has travelled widely, and lectured at universities and institutions in India, Sri Lanka, U.K., France, Germany, the U.S.A., South Korea, Fiji, New Zealand and Australia.  Apart from his contributions to numerous books, his publications include Ancient Indian Warfare with Special Reference to the Vedic Period, E.J. Brill, Leiden, with later editions brought out by Motilal Banarasidas, Delhi; The Archaeology of the Lucknow Region, Paritosh Prakashan, Lucknow; Polyandry in Ancient India, Vikas, and Motilal Banarasidas, Delhi; Culture through the Ages, (B.N. Puri Felicitation Volume), Agam, Delhi; The Art of Pir Tareen – Evocation of Beauty in Life and Nature, published by the Institute of Asian Studies, Brisbane; Indians Abroad, Hope India Publications and Greenwich Millennium Press Ltd, London, and Understanding Gandhi – A Mahatma in the Making, 1869-1914, Vij Books, New Delhi. As Honorary Consul of India in Queensland from 2003 till 2011, he addressed numerous forums, always stressing the indivisibility of humanity, and its cultural diversity as a natural expression of its floriferous creativity.

Rabbi David Rosen KSG CBE, former Chief Rabbi of Ireland, is AJC’s International Director of Interreligious Affairs and director of AJC’s Heilbrunn Institute for International Interreligious Understanding.  Rabbi Rosen is a member of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel’s Committee for Interreligious Dialogue. He is an International President of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, Honorary President of the International Council of Christians and Jews, and the only Jewish member of the Board of Directors of the King Abdullah International Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue, established in 2012 by the King of Saudi Arabia together with the governments of Austria and Spain with the support of the Holy See. In 2005, Rabbi Rosen received a knighthood from the Pope in recognition of his contribution to promoting Catholic-Jewish reconciliation and in 2010 he was awarded a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II.

Dr Richard L. Benkin is a US based human rights activist. He received a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and is the author of A Quiet Case of Ethnic Cleansing: The Murder of Bangladesh’s Hindus (2012) and What is Moderate Islam? (2017).

David Matas is a lawyer in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada practising international human rights, immigration and refugee law.  He has produced eleven different books including Justice Delayed: Nazi War Criminals in Canada 1987; Bloody Words: Hate and Free Speech, 2000; and Bloody Harvest: the Killing of Falun Gong for their Organs with David Kilgour in November 2009. He was part of the Canadian delegation to the United Nations Conference on an International Criminal Court in Rome in 1998.  He is a member of the Order of Canada.

Professor Suzanne Rutland (MA (Hons) PhD, Dip Ed, OAM) is Professor Emerita in the Department of Hebrew, Biblical & Jewish Studies, University of Sydney. She has published widely on Australian Jewish history, as well as writing on issues relating to the Holocaust, Israel and Jewish education. Her latest books are The Jews in Australia (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and co-author with Sam Lipski of Let My People Go: The Untold Story of Australia and Soviet Jews, 1959-1989 (Hybrid Publishers, 2015), which was co-winner of the Australian Prime Minster’s Literary Awards, Australian History, 2016. She received a government grant from the Australian Prime Minister’s Centre for Research on Australia for this project. In January 2008 she received the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to Higher Jewish Education and interfaith dialogue.

Suzanne Hampel, OAM, is a Tutor at Monash University since 2005, and Course Coordinator for Study Abroad trips to Rwanda and Eastern Europe. She is also a Member of the Board of the Jewish Holocaust Centre, Melbourne since 2007. She has been the Founding Director and Coordinator of March of the Living Australia educational program, 2001-2010, and has received a number of highly prestigious awards in recognition of her contributions to Holocaust education and Jewish Studies.

Srimanti Sarkar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at West Bengal State University. Previously she has been a researcher at the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies (MAKAIAS), an autonomous institute under the Ministry of Culture, Government of India. Her research interests are theoretical postulates of democracy in South Asia with particular focus on India and Bangladesh.  She has co-edited a book titled ‘The Political Future of Afghanistan: Issues and Perspectives'(New Delhi: Knowledge World Publication, 2016) and has written several articles and book chapters.She can be reached through email: s.srimanti@gmail.com

Professor Reuven Firestone is Regenstein Professor in medieval Judaism and Islam at Hebrew Union College and professor of religion at the University of Southern California. Author of eight books and over one hundred scholarly articles on Judaism, Islam, their relationship with one another and with Christianity, and phenomenology of religion, Professor Firestone lectures at universities in Europe, Asia and the Middle East as well as throughout North America. He is active on the boards of numerous scholarly journals and boards and commissions treating interreligious relations and dialogue.  An ordained rabbi, Firestone received his Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic Studies from New York University, served as Vice President for Program of the Association for Jewish Studies and President of the International Qur’anic Studies Association.

Dr Charles E Ehrlich has served as a Program Director at Salzburg Global Seminar, in Salzburg, Austria, since May 2014. He has particular responsibility for designing, developing, and implementing programs on justice, democracy, economics, and rule of law including three on-going large-scale multi-year initiatives: the Salzburg Global Holocaust Education and Genocide Prevention Program, the Salzburg Global Forum on Corporate Governance, and the Salzburg Global Forum on the Future of Public Service.  He has practical experience in legal development working in over a dozen countries, including in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Russian Federation, advising governments and public institutions on strategic planning, drafting legislation, and implementing comprehensive reforms in the justice sector, public administration, property rights, freedom of the media, and constitutional law, including in post-conflict contexts. Charles has also worked as legal counsel for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Kosovo, in Georgia, and at its Secretariat in Vienna. At the Claims Resolution Tribunal in Switzerland, he adjudicated claims to Nazi-era bank accounts. He remains affiliated with Wolfson College, University of Oxford, and has published a book, Lliga Regionalista – Lliga Catalana, 1901-1936 (in Catalan), and numerous academic articles on constitutional law, justice, and political history. Charles holds an A.B. in history and classics (Latin) from Harvard University, a J.D. from the College of William and Mary, an M.Sc.Econs. in European studies from the London School of Economics, and a D.Phil. on contemporary Spanish history from the University of Oxford.

Dr. Nabanita Mitra, an Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Women’s Christian College, Kolkata, has been teaching there since 2001. She has been working on the history of Indian broadcasting, especially the Calcutta Radio Station, for quite some time. Her research interests include gender history and cultural studies. She has published articles on the IPTA Movement and Post-independent Indian Radio, while some of her forthcoming articles are on Dalit women, Subaltern Voices and Radio Free Europe.

Dr. Stephanie Shosh Rotem is currently the visiting professor for Israel Studies at the Jewish Studies program at the University of Virginia. She is an architect, who after ten years of fieldwork, returned to graduate school at Tel Aviv University. She received her PhD in 2010 in the Program for Interdisciplinary Arts, and her doctorate was published in 2013, as “Constructing Memory: Architectural Narratives of Holocaust Museums”. Between 2011 and 2017, Stephanie was Head of the Museum Studies Program at Tel Aviv University. She also taught graduate courses in Tel Aviv’s Faculty of the Arts and in the International Program for Holocaust Studies at the University of Haifa. Stephanie lectures and publishes on architectural history, museum history and architecture, and Holocaust museums. 

Fuzail Asar Siddiqi is an MPhil Research Scholar at the Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He works as a freelance copyeditor with Oxford University Press and Pearson Global Editions. He contributes book reviews to The Telegraph, Calcutta, and is also editor of The Informer—Jawaharlal Nehru University’s first student-led newspaper.

Photo: wtxl.com

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