Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, whose personal experience of the Holocaust has led him to use his talents as an author, teacher, and storyteller to defend human rights worldwide, will be the main speaker at Ithaca College's 101st Commencement this spring.
Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1986, Wiesel has defended the causes of Soviet Jews, Nicaragua's Miskito Indians, Argentina's "disappeared," Cambodian refugees, Kurds, South African apartheid victims, famine victims in Africa, and more recently the casualties of strife in the former Yugoslavia. He and his wife, Marion, founded the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, whose mission is to advance the cause of human rights and peace.
"On behalf of the senior class officers, I can say we are pleased that Elie Wiesel has agreed to be our Commencement speaker," said senior class president Michelle Fraser. "He is a scholar, author, and humanitarian, and above all else his reputation spans generations."
Wiesel was 15 when he and his family were deported by the Nazis from their native Romania to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where his mother and younger sister perished. He and his father were later transported to Buchenwald. After the war Wiesel studied in Paris and became a journalist, though he remained silent about his experiences in the death camps. He broke that silence with the 1958 publication of his first memoir, La Nuit, which brought him international acclaim.
Among other honors, Wiesel has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States Congressional Gold Medal, and the Medal of Liberty Award, while his books have earned such recognition as the Prix Médicis, the Prix Livre, and the National Jewish Book Award.
Naturalized as an American citizen in 1963, he has served since 1976 as the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University.