An admiring crowd packed the Athenaeum and paid rapt attention as Emeritus Professor John Roth returned to CMC to take the podium and offer thought-provoking inspiration. As he concluded his talk, “How Shall I Teach the Holocaust This Time?” Roth received a rousing standing ovation.
“That was the best talk at the Ath I’ve ever heard,” said one CMC senior.
Roth, the Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Founding Director of the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights, drew CMC trustees, alumni, faculty, and students from across the 5Cs, who overflowed the Athenaeum, where Roth served as director from 1985-87.
On Nov. 13, Roth prepared the Ath audience that his talk would be challenging and explore key issues emanating from Holocaust studies and education through the lens of the recent U.S. election, as well as the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The Athenaeum is known as a place that is joyful and happy, but it also is a serious place, because the topics that are discussed and analyzed here often deal with difficult topics and circumstances, and my talk tonight fits into that category,” said Roth, who brought more than 40 years of CMC teaching experience to the eve of the Lessons and Legacies international conference, sponsored by the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University and co-hosted by CMC with the University of Southern California.
Roth opened with a warning about the Holocaust. He said teaching and learning about it required urgency, as “catastrophe does not erupt out of the blue.”
“The key point for us Americans is not that failure to heed the Holocaust warnings destines a version of that genocidal history to be ours, but that failure to heed them endangers everything that we hold dear when we are at our best. The Holocaust warns us that democracy, indeed human civilization itself, depends on seeking and respecting truth.”
Offering lessons for the future, Roth shared that “good teaching about the Holocaust will be a protest against power that undermines democracy and an opposition to authority that undercuts liberty and justice for all.”
He continued: “Always remember and act on a key Holocaust-related insight—the most important of all—take nothing good for granted. The older I become, the more that last imperative grips me … I need to remember more and more, to take nothing good for granted and to teach and act accordingly.”
A wave of joy
Despite the gravity of the topic, the evening culminated with a wave of joyful gratitude as Roth received the CMC Donald C. McKenna Humanitarian Award from President Hiram Chodosh. The distinction is reserved for “exemplary interest in education, the improvement of circumstances for peoples of the world, achievement in the humanities, business or the professions, and contributions that have been of significant importance to the College.”
“Professor Roth’s accomplishments, scholarship, and pedagogy are singular. His influential commitments to improving the human condition are exemplary. His impact on our CMC community is incalculable, and his objective accomplishments are well-known,” President Chodosh said.
In the mid-1980s, Roth joined Gordon Bjork and the late Ward Elliott to establish CMC’s Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) program. Roth’s list of distinguished CMC accomplishments includes being named an honorary member of the Claremont McKenna College Alumni Association and honored with its George C. S. Benson Distinguished Achievement Award. He also earned the Crocker Award for Excellence; the Glenn R. Huntoon Award for Superior Teaching, and the G. David Huntoon Senior Teaching Award. In addition, Roth was the inaugural recipient of the Claremont McKenna College Presidential Award for Merit in 1987 and again in 2004.
The holder of several honorary degrees, he has also received the Holocaust Educational Foundation’s Distinguished Achievement Award for Holocaust Studies and Research.
President Chodosh also noted that Roth is the author of more than 50 books, including The Failures of Ethics (2015), Sources of Holocaust Insight (2020), Warnings: The Holocaust, Ukraine, and Endangered American Democracy (2023), and Stress Test: The Israel-Hamas War and Christian-Jewish Relations (forthcoming 2025).
After detailing Roth’s accomplishments, President Chodosh said, “It is perhaps Professor Roth’s commitment to students and mentees, and to all of us, that is the most immeasurable—his interdisciplinary methodologies, his eloquent lectures, his neatly typed commentaries on student papers, and words of encouragement that our alumni are still moved by years later.”
This also reflected sentiments from earlier in the evening, when Roth gathered with a small number of PPE alumni, organized by CMC Trustee and former Montana Governor Steve Bullock ’88 P’24. The group shared memories of being among Roth’s students in “The American Dream” and the Holocaust Studies courses he regularly taught at CMC. Even today, they seek guidance from their mentor.
“Give us hope, John,” Bullock said.
Roth began by suggesting that everyone in the group read—or in the case of some of his former students, re-read—The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. The story is about an ill-fated king who is punished for eternity to push a heavy rock up a mountain, only to have it roll back to the bottom each time.
Camus imagines what Sisyphus is thinking, Roth said. He even believes him to be happy as Sisyphus refuses to “allow the rock to win.”
“And I think that’s the hope. I think the hope is in resistance, refusing to give up, refusing to disavow what is right and good, just and true. And when CMC is at its best, it teaches all of us, including the faculty, what is good and what’s just and true, and we must not give up. We must instead embrace the joy of resisting.”
Professor Roth’s presentation was co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights where he remains an active and engaged advisory board member.