Rooted and Targeted: Teaching Jewish and Black Life, Antisemitism, Anti-Blackness, and the Cities We Inherit

Date: August 3-8, 2026

Location: Los Angeles, California

About the 2026 Program:

We begin with life. We learn from history. We move forward together.

This week in California, educators came together for our five-day seminar, “Rooted and Targeted: Teaching Jewish and Black Life, Antisemitism, Anti-Blackness, and the Cities We Inherit.” This program was in partnership with The Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

During the seminar, we invited teachers to look beyond the familiar narratives of oppression and begin with the richness of Jewish and Black life, culture, community, and history. From there, participants examined the systems and structures that made exclusion, discrimination, and erasure possible (and that continue to shape our communities today).

Throughout the program, educators explored Holocaust history, the history of lynching and racial violence in the United States, antisemitism and anti-Blackness, survivor testimony, and the responsibility to teach difficult histories with care and purpose. A highlight was hearing from Dydine Umunyana Anderson, survivor of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and Founder of Kind Kulture, a Los Angeles public humanities institution dedicated to storytelling as a way of healing.

So, what do we do with what we learn? Through reflection, writing, dialogue, and classroom-focused activities, participants considered how historical understanding can lead to informed action, and how educators can help students understand the connections between the histories we inherit and the world we are building.

In partnership with Museums of Tolerance.

Leaders

  • Corey Harbaugh

    Corey Harbaugh retired as a school curriculum administrator in 2025 to move into Holocaust education as Faculty Advisor for The Olga Lengyel Institute and Curriculum Specialist for the Anne Frank Center at The University of South Carolina. He served as a member of the Governor’s Council on Holocaust & Genocide Education and co-authored the model curriculum in support of Public Act 170 of 2016 that mandates Holocaust and genocide education in Michigan schools.

  • Paul Regelbrugge

    Paul is the Director of Education at the Holocaust Center for Humanity. Previously, he was an attorney before teaching in Chicago, Buffalo, and Spokane and Kent, Washington. Paul has received degrees from Kalamazoo College, University of Detroit Mercy and Michigan State University College of Law, and his teaching certificate from Northwestern University. He is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Teacher Fellow, a Powell Teacher Fellow, and an Alfred Lerner Fellow. He is also the author of The Yellow Star House: The Remarkable Story of One Boy’s Survival in a Protected House in Hungary (Lulu, 2019).