Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel To Speak at Wesleyan

Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Laureate and award-winning author who survived the Nazi death camps, will make his first-ever detailed public address on use of the death penalty October 26^th at Wesleyan University.

Wiesel’s lecture is entitled “Building an Ethical Society: The Death Penalty and Human Dignity." It will be a departure from Wiesel’s well-known lectures on the Holocaust.

The Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University has in the past provided a glimpse into his thinking about the death penalty.

“With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory I oppose the death penalty in all forms,” Wiesel has said in news accounts. “I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don’t think it’s human to become an agent of the Angel of Death.”

In his Connecticut lecture, Professor Wiesel is expected to speak from the perspective of a person who knows what it means to have loved ones murdered, but rather than seeking retribution through the death penalty, the need for civilized societies to seek peace and atonement, and to recognize the dignity in all of humanity.

When: Tuesday, October 26, 4:45PM - Media Availability

  7:00PM – Lecture

Where:  Wesleyan University
                  221 High Street, Middletown, CT

   Lecture at Memorial Chapel