Berel Lang, a visiting professor of philosophy and letters at Wesleyan University, gave the keynote address Thursday for a weekend-long symposium on human rights.

The event titled, “Responding to Atrocities,” was held at the Lowell Center on Langdon Street and was sponsored by The Institute for Research in the Humanities as well as funded by the Center for Jewish Studies.

Claudia Card, a UW-Madison philosophy professor, organized the event as part of a senior fellowship project that will span for five years.

“These are all people whose work I have profited from over the years,” Card said. “I’ve taught their books in my classes.”

Lang has authored 21 books on similar issues including, “Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide,” “Heidegger’s Silence: The Future of the Holocaust,” and the “Holocaust Representation: Art within the Limits of History and Ethics.”

He spoke on the issues of the Holocaust, genocide and group rights in his address, “From the Holocaust to Group Rights: Minorities in a Majority World.” Lang said that the study of past tragedies like the Holocaust is “a valuable addition to thinking about justice and the good in our present and most certainly the future of our society.”

Lang described a major part of responding to atrocities as not only learning about them, but reacting to them as well.

He referenced Article II of the United Nations Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 which identifies genocide as not only the killing of group members, but also any intention to prevent births within a group.

Lang stressed that learning comes from every historical situation, including the Holocaust, which provides for growth within a society.

“Every cloud has a silver lining in that we have turned an aspect of that evil event into ethical enlightenment and in doing so [have] advanced another step in the long course of moral progress,” Lang said.

For more information about other symposium events go to: http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/jewishst/announcements.htm.