The Elie Wiesel Center invites you to join us on March 20th for the 2025 Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Lecture. This year’s lecture will feature Stuart Eizenstat, the accomplished diplomat and author who has served in six U.S. administrations, including as chief White House domestic policy adviser to President Jimmy Carter and deputy secretary of the treasury under President Bill Clinton.
Eizenstat’s lecture, “The Art of Diplomacy: How American Negotiators Reached Historic Agreements That Changed the World,” will explore themes from his book of the same title. He will explain the context for writing the book, as well as sharing the main conclusions and lessons of this work, including whether, when and how to use American military force to support diplomacy. Eizenstat will apply these findings to contemporary challenges in Ukraine and Gaza, showing how American leadership has solved equally daunting problems in the past and can do so again.
The respondent will be Timothy Longman, professor of political science and international relations and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Pardee School of Global Studies. Longman also serves as advisor to the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights program at Boston University and is a specialist in genocide studies.
This lecture will take place on March 20th at 5:00pm EST, at Boston University’s Hillel House (213 Bay State Road, Boston, MA — 4th Floor). A book sale and signing will follow the lecture, as well as a reception.
Registration is required for this event. Tickets for the livestream are available. We hope you will join us for this enlightening and timely lecture.
Speaker Bio
Stuart E. Eizenstat has served in six U.S. administrations, initially on the White House Staff of President Lyndon Johnson; as chief White House domestic policy adviser to President Jimmy Carter; in the Clinton administration, as U.S. ambassador to the European Union, undersecretary of commerce, undersecretary of state, and deputy secretary of the treasury. He was also special representative of the president and secretary of state on Holocaust issues, with continuing responsibilities on Holocaust issues, in the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. He has received eight honorary doctorate degrees and over 75 awards, including the Great Negotiator Award from Harvard Law School, and high honors from the governments of Austria, Belgium, France (two Legions of Honor), Germany, Israel and the United States. Much of the reason that justice for Holocaust survivors is on the world agenda is because of his leadership.
Eizenstat was Special Adviser on Holocaust Issues to Secretary of State Tony Blinken. He is the author of President Carter: The White House Years (2018), The Future of the Jews: How Global Forces Are Impacting the Jewish People, Israel, and Its Relationship with the United States (2012), and Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II (2003). He is an international lawyer in Washington, DC, with Covington & Burling, LLP. He is the chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Council, appointed by President Biden, which is life coming full circle for him since it was his recommendation to President Carter to appoint a Presidential Commission on the Holocaust chaired by Eli Wiesel that led directly to the creation of the Museum. This book is written in his personal capacity.
Respondent Bio
Timothy Longman is a professor of political science and international relations and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Pardee School of Global Studies. His research focuses on state-society relations in Africa, looking in particular at human rights, transitional justice, religion and politics, gender and politics, and the politics of race and ethnicity.