04/06/2009
SUNY Cortland Professor of History Sanford Gutman will deliver the College's Phi Kappa Phi lecture on the subject of Jewish-Arab relations on Monday, April 6.
Titled "Opposing Loyalties?: A Progressive, Jewish Historian Confronts the Arab-Israeli Conflict," the talk begins at 4:15 p.m. in Old Main on the third floor mezzanine. The lecture is free and open to the public.
A member of the SUNY Cortland faculty since 1972, Gutman is educated in 19th century European and French history. During his academic career, Gutman has also specialized in Jewish history, teaching courses at Cortland in modern Jewish history, modern Israel and on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Over the years, he has conducted research in both France and Israel.
The recipient of a 1982 SUNY Faculty Grant for the Improvement of Undergraduate Instruction, Gutman developed courses on the Holocaust for undergraduates and graduates. He is credited among his colleagues with having been a pioneer nationally in bringing the vast and complex body of scholarship about this most terrible of events to the college classroom. He also created a course called Teaching the Holocaust, geared for in-service teachers and graduate students earning a degree in high school teaching. Students of this course learn how to teach the moral and historical aspects of the Holocaust to young children while not letting them be overwhelmed by its horror.
Gutman has taught generations of school teachers who enrolled in the Secondary Social Studies Program at Cortland.
A graduate of the Wayne State University in Michigan, Gutman earned his master's degree and doctorate in history from the University of Michigan. He is fluent in French and reads German.
He was the Danforth Lecturer in European History at the University of Michigan from 1969-70. From 1970-72, he instructed in European history at University of Massachusetts in Boston.
Gutman was honored with the Rackham Prize by the Ford Foundation and Rackham Graduate School in 1967-68.
Formerly the History Department chair, he has also chaired the College's Jewish Studies Committee. Gutman resides in Ithaca, N.Y.