About 100 scholars from Mid-Western universities are scheduled to attend a conference on Soviet Jewry at the University of Chicago this Sunday. The. conference, sponsored by the Academic Committee on Soviet Jewry, will coincide with National Solidarity Day for Soviet Jews. According to Prof. Hans J. Morgenthau of City University, New York, committee chairman, the Chicago gathering will bring together Jewish and non-Jewish academicians from Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Prof. Morgenthau said the conference would open with a paper entitled “Why They Left,” a 10,000-word study by Prof. Maurice Friedberg of Indiana University, based on interviews he conducted in Israel last summer with 200 recent arrivals from the Soviet Union. The paper explores the motivation of Russian Jews who became activists in the struggle for emigration and other Jewish rights.
Prof. Friedberg’s findings will be discussed by Prof. Jeremy Azrael, of the political science department of the U. of Chicago and Prof. Herbert Paper of the U. of Michigan. A paper on the character and significance of the political trials of Russian Jews will be presented by Dr. William Korey of the B’nai B’rith International Council. The conference is one of an ongoing series intended to alert the academic community and the public to the situation of Jews in the USSR.
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