Professor of History Stephen M. Berk, widely known for his expertise on the Holocaust, Russia, and the Middle East, has been named the Henry and Sally Schaffer Professor of Holocaust and Jewish Studies.
Creation of the professorship was announced by the H. Schaffer Foundation.
A member of the Union faculty since 1967, Berk has earned an international reputation for his teaching, writing, and research about such topics as Russian and Soviet Jewish history, the Holocaust, the American Jewish experience, and anti-Semitism.
President Roger Hull said, “Steve Berk's lectures, both to his classes and to many organizations and conferences nationally and internationally, are legendary for their eloquence and knowledge.”
Berk said the Holocaust teaches a number of important lessons including the “pernicious impact of racism and demonological thinking in general, the role of personality in history, the need to confront evil, and the meaning of heroism.
“The Holocaust, important though it might be, is not the core of the Jewish religious and historical experience,” he continued. “The Jewish people made remarkable contributions to humanity, and this chair in Holocaust and Jewish Studies will help subsequent generations of Union students to become cognizant both of the Holocaust and the role played by Jews and Judaism in world history.”
Berk, a native of New York City, received his B.A. in history from the University of Pennsylvania, his master's degree from the University of Chicago, and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He teaches a variety of classes, including Russian history, modern history of the Middle East, history of Poland, European history, and Jewish history. He also directs the College's interdepartmental program in Russia and Eastern Europe.
For more than twenty-five years, Berk's annual course on the Holocaust has been one of the College's most popular courses. As a young boy during World War II, he remembers watching film footage of Nazi death camps, and the images contributed to his desire to teach about the subject. “I want students to learn about the Holocaust, in an attempt to make them aware of the evil around them now and what it takes to oppose evil,” he says. “Anti-Semitism made Auschwitz possible; indifference made it almost inevitable.”
In creating the professorship through a $1.5 million gift, H. Schaffer Foundation President Sonya A. Stall said, “It is with pleasure that the H. Schaffer Foundation creates this academic chair for the continuing study of Holocaust and Jewish Studies benefiting all current and future students of Union. There is no more deserving professor worthy of being the first recipient than Dr. Berk.”
The H. Schaffer Foundation is named for Henry Schaffer, a Schenectady businessman and former trustee of Union. Mr. Schaffer, who left school at age fourteen and later became an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa, was well known for his support of higher education in the Capital District and was the principal benefactor of Schaffer Library.
He died in 1982.
In recent years, the H. Schaffer Foundation has supported Union's terms abroad program and the 1998 renovation and expansion of Schaffer Library.