Co-Witnessing & Social Justice Featuring Professor Irene Kacandes
The Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies was honored to host Professor Irene Kacandes, who delivered the second lecture of the 2022 Elie Wiesel Memorial Lecture Series titled “Co-Witnessing and Social Justice: Our Response to Humanitarian Crises” on November 9, 2022.
Professor Kacandes coined “co-witnessing” to describe how people who were not targets of oppression can support those directly impacted by respectfully hearing and sharing their stories. During her talk, she explained the importance of telling someone’s stories in their own words, without appropriating their pain or focusing on the personal process of learning their story, in order to respect a person’s original experiences. She highlighted that naming certain people as victims or survivors shows who we, as a society, choose to care about.