BY BERNIE MACHEN

The following is the text of remarks by University of Florida President Emeritus Bernie Machen at a naming celebration for the Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies at UF on September 7, 2023.

The Jewish people are integral to the development of our world and have made many contributions over the ages.  And yet, we still live in a world where antisemitism is a serious issue.

One of the crucial lessons of the Holocaust is to “Never Forget.”  Never forget those who were killed. Never forget that the Holocaust happened. Never forget that anything that has happened in the past can happen again.

This is a universal lesson. It calls all of us to preserve and learn from the history of other genocides, persecutions and great injustices.

I personally feel the need for this today as I watch what is happening in Florida and across the country relative to Black
history and on LGBTQ and gender studies.

I’m especially alarmed by the notion we should teach only parts of history and only parts of Black history.

I get that people are offended by the cold facts of systemic oppression. I get that they want to believe in the power of the
individual. Heck, I like to think that I myself am a product of our meritocracy …Just as do most comfortable white men who are my age!

The simple truth is that our meritocracy has often been, and still remains, harder to access for Black people because of systemic racism. If we don’t teach this truth, we are telling young Black people a lie.  The lie we tell is that there must be something wrong with them. In fact, the problem is the world they find themselves in.

Here’s another truth: Much of the nation’s history involving Black Americans is violent and ugly.

We have to teach this history, with honesty and scrutiny in order to understand ourselves and to avoid repeating it — just as German schools and universities teach the history of the Holocaust so as to understand themselves and avoid repeating it.

“Never forget.”

I’m also very concerned by the quashing of gender and women’s studies that is happening now. What is so scary about women and about gender that we can’t support students in their sincere quest to explore these topics?

There’s this notion at the “new” New College of Florida and its academic standard bearer, Hillsdale College of Michigan, that universities should only teach classical, liberal, and quote-un-quote “pure” disciplines. But this is a narrow, impoverished view of scholarship.

Women’s and gender studies, besides being rich and important themselves, are wonderful portals to interdisciplinary research and scholarship across many fields. This is no different than Jewish studies or Muslim studies.  These are fertile grounds for inquiry, not barren ones.

Ibram X. Kendi is a bestselling American author and anti-racist scholar.  Dr. Kendi started his career as an assistant professor of history here at UF. In December 2016, he gave our commencement speech, shortly after winning the National Book Award for Stamped From The Beginning.

Speaking to Gator doctoral graduates, Dr. Kendi urged them not just to be experts, but also to be intellectuals.

He urged them, and I’m quoting his words, “to fashion a clear and unadulterated mirror of humanity, so that we can see ourselves for what we really are.”

I’ll end tonight by underscoring the centrality of Jewish studies and scholarship at UF in helping fashion a clear and
unadulterated mirror of humanity.”

Among the books in our Judaica Suite is an “ethical will,” a popular genre in the Middle Ages, used by wealthy, educated men to school their sons. Ours is a rare copy, produced in 19th century Berlin, of a will written by a 12th-century scholar.

The scholar was the owner of a renowned library in his time. His words were written in about 1190. I’ll quote just one line: “Make books your companion. Let your bookshelves be your gardens; bask in their beauty; gather their fruit, pluck their roses, take their spices and myrrh.”

UF needs the Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies. We need the center for its scholarship and research—the beauty, the fruit, the spices—and we need it to convey the story of the Jewish people to all the young people who are our future.

I hope we will never forget. I hope we will always remember and always study and investigate, the complexity, the
contradictions, the full history of our shared humanity.

Bernie Machen was President of the University of Florida from 2004 to 2014 and special adviser to his successor from 2014 to 2019. He previously served for six years as president of the University of Utah and from 1995 to 1997 as provost at the University of Michigan. He is a past president of the American Association of Dental Schools.