The Challenges of Multiculturalism in Contemporary Lithuania

Panel Discussion In partnership with Consulate General of the Republic of Lithuania in New York and the Lithuanian Culture Institute Admission: Free Watch the video

Under the auspices of Litvak Days NYC, a celebration of Lithuanian Jewish heritage, Professor Tomas Venclova (Yale University, Emeritus) will give a presentation titled, "Lithuanians and Jews: What’s Changed and What Hasn’t over the last Forty Years?” Professor Venclova will then be joined by Jonathan Brent (Executive Director of YIVO), Mindaugas Kvietkauskas (Minister of Culture of Lithuania), Professor Saulius Sužiedelis (Millersville University, Emeritus) and Rabbi Andrew Baker (American Jewish Committee, Director of International Jewish Affairs) for a discussion about the challenges of rebuilding a multicultural society in contemporary Lithuania including the difficulties of confronting the complexities of Lithuanian Jewish history, and taking lessons from it for today.

About the Speakers

Tomas Venclova was born in Vilnius in 1937. He is professor emeritus of Slavic languages and literatures at Yale University, and has been visiting professor at Harvard, Columbia, and Berkeley, as well as a poet, prose writer, scholar, philologist and translator of literature. His books include Magnetic North: Conversations with Tomas Venclova, with Ellen Hinsey (2017), Niezniszczalny rytm: Eseje o literaturze (Indestructible Rhythm: Essays on Literature), Sejny: Zeszyty Literackie-Pogranicze, (2003), Stat’i o Brodskom (Essays on Brodsky), Moscow: Baltrus-Novoe izdatel’stvo, (2005), and Vilniaus Vardai (Vilnius Personalities), Lithuania, (2006).

Saulius Sužiedėlis is professor emeritus of history at Millersville University of Pennsylvania Professor Sužiedėlis received his Ph. D. in Russian and East European history from the University of Kansas in 1977. From 1982 to 1987 he was a research historian for the  Office of Special Investigations at the U. S. Department of Justice, and during 1989-1990 worked as a radio journalist and commentator for the Voice of America. Professor Sužiedėlis is the author of a number of scholarly books and articles on Lithuanian history published both in the United States and Lithuania. Between 2007 and 2010 he served as director of Millersville University’s Annual Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide. In 2013 Professor Sužiedėlis was awarded an honorary doctorate from Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas in recognition of his work in furthering the study of humanities in Lithuania and for contributions to Holocaust research.

Rabbi Andrew Baker is director of International Jewish Affairs at the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which he joined in 1979. A leading expert on anti-Semitism in Europe, he travels extensively to strengthen relations between the AJC and Jewish communities worldwide. Throughout most of the 1990s, as director of European Affairs, Rabbi Baker promoted tolerance in the emerging democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. He is active in Holocaust restitution issues and in 2003 was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit by Germany for his work on German-Jewish relations.

Mindaugas Kvietkauskas is a literary scholar, writer, and translator. Since the beginning of 2019, Kvietkauskas has served as Lithuania’s Minister of Culture. Before becoming a minister, Kvietkauskas worked at the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore in Vilnius for many years and managed this institution in 2008-2018. Kvietkauskas acquired his Ph.D. at the Department of Lithuanian Literature, Vilnius University, and studied Yiddish Language and Literature at The Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies of the University of Oxford. His main areas of research are multinational literary modernism and urban culture in Lithuania and East-Central Europe. He is the author of two academic monographs, a collection of poetry, and a recent book of literary essays “Uosto Fuga” (“The Port Fugue”). Kvietkauskas has also translated several books from the Polish and Yiddish languages, including works by Czesław Miłosz and Abraham Sutzkever.

Jonathan Brent is the Executive Director of The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City. From 1991 to 2009 he was Editorial Director and Associate Director of Yale Press. He is the founder of the world acclaimed Annals of Communism series, which he established at Yale Press in 1991. Brent is the co-author of Stalin’s Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953 (Harper-Collins, 2003) and Inside the Stalin Archives (Atlas Books, 2008). He is now working on a biography of the Soviet-Jewish writer Isaac Babel. Brent teaches history and literature at Bard College.