“Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE) challenges graduate students and future leaders to recognize and confront their ethical responsibilities as professionals by analyzing the decisions and actions of Nazi-era professionals, integrating history and contemporary ethical issues.”
A conversation on a remarkable program and organization, with Executive Director Thorsten Wagner, three alumni of the IGL who participated in the Fellowships - Ben Perlstein, Duncan Pickard, and Tomo Takaki - and Talia Weiss, a Yale Phd student in physics who has written and led programs on science, technology and ethics for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
Thorsten Wagner is a German-Danish historian. Born and raised in Sønderborg, Denmark, Thorsten completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Tubingen, Germany, and has lived in Berlin since 1993. He conducted graduate work at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Technische Universität Berlin, and the Freie Universität Berlin, earning his MA from the TU and FU Berlin in 1998 in modern history, political science and German literature. After serving as an educator at the Jewish Museum of Berlin and a research fellow at the Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, since 2010 Thorsten has held a permanent position as associate professor at the Danish Institute for Study Abroad (DIS)/University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Ben Perlstein is in his final year of rabbinical training at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he is also completing an M.A. in Jewish Thought focused on ethics and mysticism. Ben was a 2018 FASPE Seminary Fellow and previously graduated summa cum laude from Tufts University, where he studied political science and participated in the Institute for Global Leadership's EPIIC and Synaptic Scholars programs. Through the international Jewish education organization Kivunim, Ben has spoken at the U.N. on the complexities of Holocaust commemoration and participated in the first Holocaust conference in the Arab world. Now serving as a rabbinic intern at Romemu, Ben is passionate about creative, multidisciplinary and multifaith applications of spiritual wisdom and practice to issues of public concern and pastoral need.
Duncan Pickard is an associate in the International Dispute Resolution Group of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, a global law firm based in New York, where he represents States, international organizations, and public companies. He previously worked for Democracy Reporting International, a Berlin-based organization promoting democracy worldwide. He was a 2017 FASPE Law Fellow. Duncan is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and he holds degrees from Stanford Law School, the Harvard Kennedy School, and Tufts University.
Tomo Takaki is a recent graduate of Yale Law School, where he was a member of the Veterans Legal Services Clinic. He was a 2018 FASPE Law Fellow. Prior to law school, Tomo worked as an AmeriCorps Fellow and served in the U.S. Army, most recently at the Office of the Chief Prosecutor in the Office of Military Commissions. He previously graduated from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service with a M.A. in Security Studies in 2015 and from Tufts University with a B.A. in International Relations and a minor in Arabic in 2011, where he was a member of the IGL's EPIIC and ALLIES programs.
Talia Weiss is a physics PhD student at Yale University. Previously, she received a B.S. in physics from MIT and an M.A. in political science from the University of Chicago, where she focused on political theory and international affairs. Talia’s masters thesis investigated how scientists who invented gene editing technologies understood the ethics of their research and acted in response. Talia has developed and moderated expert panel discussions on climate, nuclear, and emerging technology policy for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. She also wrote for the Bulletin on the moral failings of Nazi physicists. While in college, Talia worked for the MIT Washington Office, where she reported on federal R&D policy developments for university leadership.