Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel returns to campus to share and inspire

Nobel Laureate, human rights activist and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel returns to Chapman University next week for his fourth annual visit with students and faculty. Wiesel’s week at Chapman is one of the yearly highlights among the scholarly activities, lectures and events hosted by
The Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education
, one of the university’s premier research programs.

President Jim Doti has praised the Wiesel visits as unique opportunities for students that “will have an impact on their years here at Chapman and on the way they look at the world.”

This visit, Sunday April 6, through Sunday, April 13, marks the fourth in Wiesel’s five-year appointment as a Distinguished Presidential Fellow. Previously he has participated in a variety of events, including a series of dialogues with
faculty
,
public lectures
and a reader’s theatre performance of his writing.

Reserved seating for this year’s featured events is now closed, but standby lines will be available. The events include:

• Stories and Memories: From Always and Now, Tuesday, April 8 at 11 a.m. Wiesel, in an onstage conversation with Chancellor Daniele Struppa, will discuss the writing and storytelling process in front of an audience of Chapman students and faculty. This event is open only to the Chapman community.

• An Evening of Stories and Storytelling, Thursday, April 10, at 8 p.m. This is Wiesel’s only public event during his visit and tickets are sold out but there will be a standby line. Department of Theatre students, under the direction of Nina LeNoir, Ph.D., will perform excerpts from two of Wiesel’s works, King Solomon and His Magic Ring and The Golem, onstage in the Fish Interfaith Center.  Wiesel will join them onstage at the conclusion to share a story.

Wiesel is the author of the international bestseller
Night
, a memoir of his experiences in the Auschwitz, Buna and Buchenwald concentration camps, and more than 60 other books. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for his work as a “messenger to mankind” of “peace, atonement and human dignity.”

Wiesel is on the faculty of Boston University where he has taught since 1976 and is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities. He first visited Chapman University in April 2005, when he took part in dedication ceremonies for the university’s
Sala and Aron Samueli Holocaust Memorial Library
.