(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)October 14, 2010

(MAHWAH, NJ) – Louis Begley, the author of Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters (Yale University Press, 2009), delivered the second annual William K. Gumpert Memorial Lecture on Human Rights and Genocide at Ramapo College of New Jersey on October 14. The topic of Begley’s talk was “In Defense of Human Rights: Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters.”

The event is sponsored by the Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and supported by a grant [made to the Ramapo College Foundation for the Center’s benefit] in memory of California attorney and longtime Center benefactor William K. Gumpert, who passed away in the fall of 2007. It is supported by the Gumpert Foundation, established under a bequest before his passing, which fosters a series of initiatives in Genocide and Human Rights Education at Ramapo College.

In his talk, Begley reflected on how an ostensibly democratic constitutional state with an exemplary legal system could be imperiled when self-preservation and bigotry triumphed over the rule of law and humanity. At the center of his talk was an analytical description of how in fin-de-siècle France the wrongful conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus for treason and the battle for his exoneration was infused with anti-Semitism. It tearing the country apart, Begley maintained, it was a struggle in which the fundamental democratic values of due process, equal justice for all, and the rule of law were. In that way, he posited, the situation bears a resemblance to the post-9/11 environment in our country in which democratic values and tolerance are sacrificed in favor of irrational concerns for security and bigotry.

A novelist and former senior partner at the New York law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton, Louis Begley is a survivor of the Holocaust who was born in Poland in 1933 and came to the US in 1946. He attended Harvard University and after a stint in the US Army, Harvard Law School, where he graduated with honors in 1959, after which he joined Debevoise & Plimpton.

In addition to “Why the Dreyfus Affair Matter,” Begley has written seven novels beginning with the publication of his first, Wartime Lies, in 1991 and then The Man who was Late, As Max Saw It, About Schmidt, Mister’s Exit, Schmidt Delivered and Shipwreck. His novels have won numerous awards, have been finalists in the National Book Awards and the National Book Critics Circle, and have been translated into fifteen languages. About Schmidt was the basis for movie starring Jack Nicholson. Louis Begley lives in Manhattan with his wife, the French writer and biographer Anka Muhlstein.

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