The Burden of the Past: Holocaust and Colonialism, Two Conflicting Memories

American University’s Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies, Michael Brenner, will discuss the status of memory culture and politics in today’s society with two of the most acclaimed European public intellectuals, French-Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz and Iranian-German scholar of Islam and novelist Navid Kermani. The conversation will focus on the significance of public voices in our polarized world, on the changing concept of “the West”, on religion as a bridge or as a radicalizing element in conflicts, on the limits of freedom of expression, and on the current developments in Israel and Iran.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Israel Studies, the Jewish Studies Program, and the Institute for Political Theory at American University, and by the Goethe Institute and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

Navid Kermani, according to the New York Review of Books “among the most thoughtful intellectual voices in German today,” is one of Germany’s most acclaimed writers and scholars of Islam and recently visited some of the world’s major conflict zones as a literary observer. He has published widely on the aesthetic experience of the Quran, on Muslims in Germany, on his travels from Eastern Europe to the Middle East, on the children of the Iranian Revolution, on Neil Young, and on the modern search for God. For his more than 25 books, he was awarded almost all of Germany’s most prestigious literary awards, including the Hannah Arendt Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Hölderlin Prize and the Thomas Mann Prize.

Eva Illouz was born in Morocco and educated in France and Israel. She held the Rose Issac Chair in Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was the first woman president of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. She is currently Directrice d'Etudes at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Named the eighth most influential woman in sociology worldwide in 2022, Illouz has published sixteen books on love, on the impact of capitalism on emotions and gender relations, and on Israeli society both before and after October 7. She received numerous literary and scholarly awards in Europe and Israel. In 2025, the Israel Prize committee selected Illouz for the prestigious Israel Prize in Sociology. After education minister Yoav Kisch declared that he would not allow this award to be given to Illouz, the Institute for Israeli Thought awarded Illouz the Democratic Israel Prize.

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Host or Publisher Meltzer Schwartzberg Center for Israel Studies