“When someone feels like their rights are being violated or the government is overstepping their bounds, they’ll cite the Holocaust, which is very dangerous,” says Alan Marcus, a professor in UConn’s Neag School of Education.

Marcus recently was part of a team that produced a research study that was published in “Holocaust Studies” that examined the transition of Holocaust education from live to virtual survivor testimony. Marcus also wrote a column for The Conversation on the issue.

Connecticut is the first state in the nation to mandate that all of its high schools offer an elective class on Black and Latinx history. These classes must be taught by the fall of 2022, but many high schools have added them to the curriculum this year. Alan Marcus, a professor of curriculum and instruction in UConn’s Neag School of Education, has led a team that developed a website to assist high school teachers with the instruction of this course.

Historical monuments are intended to be timeless, but almost all have an expiration date. As society’s values shift, the legitimacy of monuments can and often does erode,” say Alan Marcus, a professor of curriculum and instruction at the Neag School, and Walter Woodward, an associate professor of history at UConn. “This is because monuments – whether statues, memorials or obelisks – reveal the values of the time in which they were created and advance the agendas of their creators.”