ADI Invites Members of the Penn State Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Initiative to Dickinson Law

ADI INVITES MEMBERS OF THE PENN STATE HOLOCAUST, GENOCIDE AND HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION INITIATIVE TO DICKINSON LAW

April 2024 — In March, Penn State Dickinson Law’s Antiracist Development Institute (ADI) invited members of Penn State’s Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Initiative to Dickinson Law to share knowledge and explore future collaboration opportunities.

Professor Boaz Dvir, director of the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Initiative, and his team met with both the ADI and Race and the Equal Protection of the Laws (REPL) teams, including Dickinson Law Dean and Donald J. Farage Professor of Law Danielle M. Conway, the executive director of the ADI; Dickinson Law Professor of Law and Harvey A. Feldman Distinguished Faculty Scholar Dermot Groome, the ADI’s associate director; ADI Program Manager TaWanda H. Stallworth; and ADI Education Program Coordinator Serena Hermitt.

Others in attendance included REPL’s Assistant Professor of Law, Joseph H. Goldstein Faculty Scholar, and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Jeffrey Dodge; Professor of Law, Lewis H. Vovakis Distinguished Faculty Scholar, and Associate Dean for Antiracism and Critical Pedagogy Shaakirrah Sanders; and Assistant Professor of Law Andrea J. Martin.

The Holocaust Initiative has developed an innovative program to train educators on how to engage students in difficult topics in a way that builds empathy and facilitates shared understanding. Throughout the afternoon, the three teams learned about each other’s work, shared their knowledge and experience, and identified areas of collaboration.

Over the course of the day, the ADI and the Holocaust Initiative recognized several areas of alignment between their work, such as identifying ways to work together to teach material faculty needs to know. The teams also discovered similarities in the way they approach the task of creating spaces where difficult discussions about important issues can occur.

The ADI and the Holocaust Initiative have already identified several areas of collaboration. The Holocaust Initiative will become a pod partner as part of an upcoming University-wide scaleup of the ADI. Dvir and his team will also write several chapters in the ADI’s nine-volume book series, Building an Antiracist Law School, Legal Academy, and Legal Profession.

Conway and Dvir made a mutual commitment to work together in the coming years to use the synergy between their two initiatives to benefit Penn State and higher education more broadly.

At the end of the day, the ADI team presented their colleagues at the Holocaust Initiative with a copy of International Crimes, Law and Practice, Volume I: Genocide by Guénaël Mettraux. Dickinson Law students served as research assistants to Judge Mettraux as he wrote the acclaimed 2019 book, prompting Oxford University Press to hold its launch at the Law School.