June 18, 2003

TSU's Peifer one of 36 nationwide to participate in Holocaust seminar

Dr. Elizabeth Peifer of Montgomery, assistant professor of history at Troy State University, is among 36 teachers from throughout the nation selected to participate in a seminar focusing on teaching the history of the Holocaust.

The weeklong Summer Institute for Teachers, scheduled for June 22-26 at Columbia University in New York, will expose participants to Holocaust scholars, survivors and rescuers. The program is sponsored by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, an international, non-profit organization founded in 1986 by Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis to “search out and recognize goodness.” The foundation, which launched the summer institute in 2000, is dedicated to preserving the lessons and history of the Holocaust, as well as the stories of non-Jews who risked their lives and the lives of their families to rescue Jews from the almost certain death of the concentration camps.

Dr. Peifer, who has been named an Alfred Lerner Fellow by the foundation, will join three other Alabama teachers who were selected to participate through the foundation’s Holocaust Centers of Excellence Program. The organization partners with 16 Holocaust centers throughout the nation with each center nominating two teachers to attend the seminar.

Dr. Peifer, who has been teaching at TSU since 2000, graduated from Davidson College and earned master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of North Carolina. Before coming to Troy State University, Dr. Peifer served as an instructor in the Department of History and German Studies Curriculum at the University of North Carolina, an assistant professor of history at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, and an adjunct professor of history at Birmingham-Southern College.