John Roth, the Edward J. Sexton Professor of Philosophy and director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights, was awarded an honorary degree from Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky., while delivering the commencement address to the college's graduating seniors last month.
Roth was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by the University on May 27. Transylvania University is the 16th oldest college in the nation and the first west of the Allegheny Mountains.
The honorary degree is the fifth among Roth's extensive academic accomplishments and acknowledgements. He also has been the recipient of honorary degrees from Indiana University (Doctorate of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa), Grand Valley State University, Hebrew Union College, and Western University of Health Sciences.
In 1988 Roth was named U.S. Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He also was the recipient of the first Claremont McKenna College President's Award in 1987 and again in 2004. His expertise in Holocaust and genocide studies has been advanced by postdoctoral appointments as a Graves Fellow in the Humanities, a Fulbright lecturer in American Studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and a Fellow of the National Humanities Institute, Yale University.
In 2004-05, Roth was the Ina Levine Scholar in Residence at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
In addition to his prolific career in the classroom, he has written, coauthored, or edited more than 40 books, including his latest, Ethics During and After the Holocaust: In the Shadow of Birkenau (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), exploring how Birkenau, the main killing center at Auschwitz, continues to shadow basic beliefs concerning right and wrong, human rights, and the hope that human beings will learn from the past.