On Tuesday, May 5, the GC’s European Union Studies Center will commemorate the end of World War II with the Otto and Fran Walter Memorial Lecture, “Victory in Europe: The 70th Anniversary of the Defeat of European Fascism.”

Moderated by John Torpey (Sociology/History), the discussion will feature several key scholars, among them Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science at Columbia University; Stephen Kotkin, John P. Birkelund ’52 Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University; and Charles Maier, Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History at Harvard University. Frank G. Helman, the president of the Otto and Fran Walter Foundation, will give the welcoming address.

Torpey, the director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studiesat the Graduate Center, will moderate the discussion. Topics will include the significance of the defeat of European fascism for the United States, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union, and how our understanding of the history of World War II affect politics today.

“This anniversary should remind us of the fact that Europe was once a very much more violent place than the prosperous, pacific region that it has mostly been since the end of World War II,” Torpey said in a recent Q&A.

The event is cosponsored by GC’s Leon Levy Center for Biography and the Ralph Bunch Institute for International Studies, and by the American Council on Germany.