 Natan Sharansky will be the guest lecturer for the 2007 Shirley and Leonard Goldstein Lecture on Human Rights at 7:00 p.m. Wednesday, 14 November, 2007. The lecture will be held in the Ballroom of the Milo Bail Student Center on the University of Nebraska at Omaha campus.
Natan Sharansky is an internationally renowned human rights activist, political leader, and author.
During the Cold War, Sharansky became active in the human rights movement led by Andre Sakharov, as well as one of the most prominent Jewish dissidents in the Soviet Union. He was a founding member and spokesman of the Helsinki Monitoring Group, which reported on Soviet compliance with international agreements. His fight for freedom during nine years of imprisonment by the Soviet police state was a milestone in the global struggle for human rights. It was in Russia that Shirley Goldstein became acquainted with Sharansky. She was very influential in getting his case (and the case of many other dissidents) known to the free world. Mr. Sharansky was released on February 11, 1986, emigrated to Israel and arrived in Jerusalem on that very day.
Since his arrival to Israel he became active in the integration of Soviet Jews and formed the Zionist Forum , an organization dedicated to helping new Israelis and education and educating the public about absorption issues. In 1994, he co-founded Peace Watch – an independent non-partisan group committed to monitoring the compliance to agreements signed by Israel and the PLO. He also served as Associate Editor of “The Jerusalem Report”. In 1996, he formed the political party Yisrael B’Aliya dedicated to accelerating the absorption of the massive numbers of Russian immigrants into Israeli society.
From 1996 to 2005, Sharansky served as Minister, as well as Deputy Prime Minister in all of the successive governments. In November 2006 Natan Sharansky resigned from the Israeli Knesset and assumed the position of Chairman of the newly established Institute for Strategic Studies of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem..
His Memoir, Fear no Evil, was published in the United States in 1988 and has been translated into nine languages. His most recent book The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror attracted wide-spread attention.
He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress the Presidential Medal of Freedom..
Natan Sharansky and his wife, Avital, reside in Jerusalem with their two daughters.
The public is welcome to attend the lecture at no charge.
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