BEER-SHEVA, Israel (Press Release) Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) presented pioneering Holocaust historian and professor Saul Friedlander with a prestigious honorary doctoral degree at the 44th Annual Board of Governors Meeting in Beer-Sheva, Israel.
Additionally, the university conferred honors on three other California residents: Cheryl Saban, Nahum Guzik, and James M. Breslauer.
Saul Friedlander
Prof. Friedlander is one of the world’s foremost Holocaust historians. In 2008, he won a Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction for his book The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945.
In addition to winning a Pulitzer Prize, he has won the Israel Prize; a Peace Prize of the German Book Trade; a Leipzig Book Fair Prize. In February 2014, he won the Dan David Prize Foundation’s prize in the History and Memory category which acknowledges extraordinary achievement in “innovative and interdisciplinary research that cuts across traditional boundaries and paradigms. Friedlander was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1999.
Friedlander has credited his extraordinary experiences during World War II with inspiring his career. He grew up as a converted Catholic in a French monastery in the 1940s, not knowing that his Jewish parents had perished in the Nazi Holocaust. Later, he decided to reclaim his Jewish identity and became a sharp observer of Nazi Germany and its treatment of the Jews.
Friedlander began teaching at Tel Aviv University in 1976 and joined UCLA’s history department in 1988. For the next decade, he split his time between the two universities before retiring from the Israeli university in the late 1990s. Friedlander retired in 2011 from UCLA but he has been teaching one course a year since that time.
At the ceremony, BGU President Prof. Rivka Carmi conferring upon him the degree of Doctor Philosophiae Honoris Causa, said, “In recognition of one of the foremost researchers of the history of the Holocaust for his notable contribution in elucidating the enigma of the Jewish people’s survival in our age in acknowledgement of a uncompromising historian who, with rare intellectual courage, connects between biography and history, as well as the fate of the individual and that of a people.”
“My dream that people will take from my work is the direction leading to compassion, understanding the suffering of others, and the will to live peacefully with others,” said Friedlander.
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Cheryl Saban
Chereyl Saban is a writer, social activist, psychologist, philanthropist and a Presidential appointee as special public delegate to the United Nations for the 67th General Assembly. She is also a well-known advocate for women and children and also actively supports pediatric medical research, educational sponsorship and affordable health care.
Dr. Saban formed The Women’s Self-Worth Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the empowerment, well-being, education and healthcare of women and children both in the U.S. and abroad.
She has authored 14 books including, What is your Self Worth? A Woman’s Guide to Validation, and most recently, Soul Sisters, the Special Relationship of Girlfriends. A frequent speaker on women’s issues, she advocates for women, children and socio-political issues.
At the ceremony, BGU President Carmi conferred upon her the degree of Doctor Philosophiae Honoris Causa stating that “Dr. Saban is a woman of vision, who is committed to the empowerment and strengthening of girls and women and devoted to promoting educational programs and medical centers, including those for children and women at the Soroka University Medical Center.”
“My ability to give is going to continue for the rest of my life, but I really think that when one person is giving, it’s like putting a stone in a pond,” said Dr. Saban. “It’s a ripple that continues out. It’s infectious- its actually contagious in a good way. It spreads the news, it gets people going and it shares excitement and other people get inspired to do the same thing.”
President of the Saban Family Foundation, she is also on the board of Trustees of Girl’s Inc., Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, The Saban Research Institute, and The Saban Free Clinic – formerly known as, The Los Angeles Free Clinic. Other affiliations include The Everychild Foundation, and the Saban Center for Middle East Studies at the Brookings Institution. Previously she served as a Commissioner for the City of Los Angeles Commission for Children, Youth and Their Families; the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Universal Preschool; the Marc & Jane Nathanson Mental Health Resource Center at UCLA; and the Board of Overseers at the Keck School of Medicine at USC.
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Nahum Guzik
For many years, the Guzik Foundation enabled hundreds of young Russian and Armenian musicians to pursue their dreams, providing funding for training, recording contracts, living expenses, and international tours.
Dr. Guzik was trained as an engineer in Odessa, Russia. At age 20, he emigrated to Israel to pursue his Jewish identity. “If it were not for Israel, I would have never left Russia, and my life would be completely different,” says Guzik.
Shortly after, he moved to the United States and founded Guzik Technical Enterprises, which today provides sophisticated disk drive test solutions and waveform acquisition tools for use in avionics, signal intelligence, military electronics, and semiconductors. Throughout his career, Guzik’s innovations and hundreds of patents have advanced the disk drive and computer industry.
Carmi conferred upon Guzik the degree of Doctor Philosophiae Honoris Causa stating that, “he has generously contributed to noble causes worldwide and is a proud philanthropic activist in the Northern California Jewish community. He has blessed many organizations and talented young musicians with his generosity and is committed to the advancement of higher education and research in Israel in general, and in the Negev in particular.”
On Sunday, May 18, Dr. Guzik was also recognized at a dedication ceremony for his recent significant contribution to build the Guzik Family Building for Biotechnology Engineering.. The building will house the Avram and Stella Goldstein-Goren Department of Biotechnology Engineering and the Unit of Environmental Engineering. It will also be the home of the new Center for Regenerative Medicine, Cellular Therapy and Stem Cell Research, and a number of much needed generic laboratories.
At the building dedication ceremony, Prof. Carmi read from a letter sent to her from Carnegie Mellon University Prof. Ed Fredkin, who wrote that “Guzik has made one invention after another, and still continues in an unending process that has not only kept pace with the frantic yet steady progress of computer technology, but that has always been far in front of any other person, groups of persons, giant corporate research staffs, university researchers…always far in front with one good, original idea after another. He should be recognized as one of the greatest engineers of his era.”
Exceptionally modest, the inventor claimed to be overpraised. “The way I see it, I’m happy to fund good causes to help Israel,” said Guzik. “I donate because they are great — not me.”
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James M. Breslauer
The Breslauer family has been actively supporting BGU for decades– Jim was recognized at this time with this distinguished honor for personally spearheading the development of and funding for Israel’s new cyber technology center, CyberSpark, at the new Advanced Technologies Park (ATP), in Beer-Sheva.
“Fifteen years ago, BGU President Avishay Braverman (currently minister of Knesset) asked me to be part of developing a new industrial park next to BGU,” Breslauer explains. “I worked with the partners and developers and provided initial funding. This is my chance to make a difference for the University, for the State of Israel and for the hundreds, if not thousands, of people who will one day work there.”
The ATP will become the cyber security center of Israel. The first building opened in August; tenants include Cisco, Elbit Systems, EMC, Israel’s National Cyber Bureau, and BGU’s Deutsche Telekom Laboratories. Hewlett Packard recently joined and IBM will be moving into facilities in BGU’s Alon Building for High-Tech. Additionally, the high-tech units of the Israel Defense Forces will be moving to its own campus next to the ATP. All will benefit from collaboration with each other and with the cyber security expertise and researchers at BGU.
At the ceremony, Carmi conferred upon him the degree of Doctor Philosophiae Honoris Causa stating that, “he is a man of great foresight, a committed partner in making the Negev bloom, who understands the area’s need for sustainable engines of economic growth and took the lead from the outset in promoting the building of the Advanced Technologies Park that is turning the Negev into a thriving region for the benefit of its residents and the State of Israel as a whole.”
Recently, Breslauer sold his initial investment in the ATP and is donating the $1.25 million proceeds to fund the Jim and Liz Breslauer Bridge. The new pedestrian walkway over a busy street will connect BGU’s Marcus Family Campus with its Faculty of Health Sciences and Soroka University Medical Center.
Jim and his wife, Elizabeth, live in Long Beach, California.
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Preceding provided by Ben Gurion University of the Negev.