MOUNT VERNON -- William Parsons, chief of staff of the
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and an award-winning graduate of Cornell College, will speak at Cornell on Thursday, April 15, at 11 a.m. in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons.
Parsons will speak on "Holocaust Remembrance and Confronting Genocide." He will deliver the same lecture that evening, at 7:30 p.m., at All Saints Catholic Church for the Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) service.
Parsons also will lecture at Mount Mercy College on Wednesday, April 14, at 7:30 p.m. in Cherry Heritage Hall, and at Coe College on April 15 at 3 p.m. in Hickok Hall's Kesler Room. The title of these talks is "The Memory of the Holocaust Can Help Confront Injustice."
All lectures are free and open to the public. Sponsors include the Thaler Holocaust Memorial Fund and Cedar Rapids' Jewish-Christian Dialogue Group.
Parsons has served as the chief of staff for the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C., since 1996. The museum's mission is "to advance and disseminate knowledge about this unprecedented tragedy; to preserve the memory of those who suffered; and to encourage its visitors to reflect upon the moral and spiritual questions raised by the events of the Holocaust as well as their own responsibilities as citizens of a democracy."
In 2002, Parsons received Cornell's highest honor, the Distinguished Achievement Award, in recognition of his "passion for education and teaching." The award cited Parsons as one who "embodies the mission of Cornell College to empower students for leadership through productive careers and humane service in the global community."
Education has been Parsons' primary passion. Prior to becoming chief of staff, he worked with the Holocaust museum's director to develop an education program used by teachers throughout the United States. Parsons also co-founded the Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation Inc., where he directed curriculum programming that was taught to over half a million children nationwide annually. The foundation received exemplary marks from the U.S. Department of Education in 1980 and 1984. Parsons also has served as a consultant on such PBS series as "Africans in America" and "Eyes on the Prize."
He began his educational career teaching social studies and English in Brookline, Mass., public schools after earning a master's degree in teaching from the University of Wisconsin.
He has co-authored two books on genocide, "Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior" and "Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views."
