November 02, 2007

Two prominent Tacoma area families have funded a $1 million endowed professorship in Holocaust studies at PLU. The gifts secure the university’s position as one of the premier centers for Holocaust studies in the nation.

The donors are Kurt and Pam Mayer, Joe and Gloria Mayer, Natalie Mayer-Yeager, Nancy Powell, Carol Powell Heller and Harry Heller. Together they have committed both to giving $1 million and to help raise another $1 million to eventually fund a $2 million endowed chair.

The professorship honors the memory of their family and friends who were murdered in the Holocaust.

Robert P. Ericksen ’67, PLU professor of history and an internationally recognized Holocaust scholar, has received the inaugural appointment to the Kurt Mayer Professorship in Holocaust Studies.

As the endowment grows it will fund supplemental salary for the Mayer Professor, research and travel related to scholarship, enhanced library resources, student-faculty research fellowship opportunities, coordination of the annual Lemkin Student Essay Contest and the Lemkin Lecture, and an annual Holocaust conference in connection with the Lemkin Lecture.

Each year the lecture is held in the fall and contest in the spring. They are named for Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide” and worked for passage of the United Nations genocide convention. The first Powell and Heller Family Conference in Support of Holocaust Education was held last Friday.

Kurt Mayer, who is a former PLU regent, said through the establishment of this professorship, his family, with the help of the Powell family, hopes that Holocaust studies can teach students to be fair, to be balanced and to be open minded.

“My hope is that the events that killed members of my family, as well as the families of millions of others, will lead PLU students who undertake this course of study to lead productive, tolerant lives and serve as examples to others,” Mayer said.

Nancy Powell said that her family mission is to teach the history and lessons of the Holocaust to students and educators of all races and religious beliefs throughout the Pacific Northwest.

“We want to prevent its recurrence and create an understanding and mutual respect for future generations,” she said. “Our support is in honor of all the millions of people who lost their lives in the Holocaust and survivors such as John and Georgette Heller, parents of Harry Heller.”

History professor Walter Schnackenberg first emphasized the study of the Holocaust at PLU. When he died, PLU sought a successor and hired Christopher Browning. Browning left PLU in 1999 and now holds the Frank Porter Graham Chair in History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He was replaced by Ericksen.

This week, Ericksen will deliver the highly prestigious Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Annual Lecture at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. He is the author of “Theologians Under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanuel Hirsch,” which has been made into a documentary film.

“That PLU is a church-related university with a dedication to Holocaust studies is important and unique,” Ericksen said.

“Chris Browning built such momentum here and created this tremendous attention for PLU. Now when people throughout the United States and in Europe hear Pacific Lutheran University, they recognize it as an important center in Holocaust studies,” he said.

“This is a monumental occasion for the university,” President Loren J. Anderson said.

“Holocaust Studies is not a new idea at PLU. It is an area of academic distinction and excellence that has been built over the past three decades – made possible by the commitment and support of the university at all levels, by the remarkable leadership of professors Christopher Browning and Robert Ericksen, and by the support of many close friends of the university, as well as members of the Jewish community.

“And now we know that this distinction is secure for the university. We will be forever in debt to the Mayer and Powell families and the other donors who have made this professorship possible,” he said.

University Communications Executive Director Greg Brewis compiled this report. Comments, questions, ideas? Please contact him at ext. 8565 or at brewisgw@plu.edu. Photo by University Photographer Jordan Hartman.