Mittelman-Berman Holocaust Education Series: Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper

Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper

As news of the horrors of the Holocaust spread beyond Europe to the rest of the world, major publications had to decide how they would cover the murder of European Jews under Hitler’s Final Solution. In Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper, Laurel Leff, veteran journalist and professor of journalism at Northeastern University, asserts that The New York Times consistently and purposefully downplayed the Holocaust, burying the mass murder of Jews in its back pages. Join Professor Leff for a discussion of her research on The Times’ response to the Holocaust and its impact on the greater understanding of the American public.

About the Speaker

Laurel Leff is Professor of Journalism and Associate Director of Jewish Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. Her latest book, Well Worth Saving: American Universities’ Life and Death Decisions on Refugees from Nazi Europe was a finalist for a 2020 National Jewish Book Award. Her previous book, Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper was chosen as the Best Media History Book of 2005 by The American Journalism Historians’ Association and Best History Book of 2005 by ForeWord Reviews. She has published several monographs on the response of American elites to pleas to rescue European Jews during the 1930s and 1940s, most recently an examination of Edward R. Murrow and the Holocaust in American Journalism. Leff has a master’s in the study of law from Yale University and a master’s in communications from the University of Miami. She received an A.B. from Princeton University with a major in the School of Public and International Affairs. She was formerly a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and The Miami Herald and an editor with American Lawyer Media Inc. and The Hartford Courant.

Registration includes a 6:00 p.m. reception and 7:00 p.m. program.