"People in our country, among us, were made victims of deadly hate and right-wing violence," Wulff said in Berlin as he received the Leo Baeck Award from the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
The award honors Wulff's relationship with Israel and the Jewish community in Germany. This January he visited the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz to commemorate the 66th anniversary of its liberation, and one year ago he visited Israel just months after taking office.
Christian Wulff during his visit to the former Auschwitz death campJustice served?
Wulff said he would be hosting a memorial service for the 10 people thought to have been killed by a secret neo-Nazi cell since 2000. The scandal, uncovered only recently, has shocked Germany and raised questions of why it took so long for authorities to make the connection to right-wing extremists.
"Has our country given justice to the victims and their families?" Wulff asked in his acceptance speech, directly questioning the country's authorities. "Must we have assumed a connection to right-wing extremists, and were the culprits sufficiently monitored? ... Have we possibly allowed ourselves to be misguided by prejudice?"
The string of murders was uncovered only recentlyCrass assessment in pressWulff added that Germany could not ignore the victims' families, and that the country has profited from its openness to the world.
"This is something we are going to continue to develop and defend against all threats and fears of all things different," he said.
The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann, echoed Wulff's remarks on the murders and criticized the tabloid press's use of the phrase "döner murder," which refers to the Turkish dish popular in Germany. Most of the murder victims were of Turkish or Greek origin and operated restaurant stands.
Graumann called on Germans to offer greater societal empathy to the victims.
Author: Marcel Fürstenau, Berlin / acb
Editor: Andreas Illmer
目前漢文界似乎還沒類似的公共知識份子。
雖然台灣的，可能呼之欲出。
更多關於Cornel West的英文資訊， 以後有空再翻譯。
http://www.answers.com/topic/cornel-west
Cornel West Leaves Princeton The public intellectual will take a pay cut to return to where he began his teaching career. By Abby Ohlheiser | Posted Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011, at 10:56 AM ET
Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images.
Cornel West, the public intellectual, activist and Ivy League professor, is taking a "significant pay cut" to leave Princeton and return to where he began his teaching career: Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York.
His new title: Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practices.
The New York Times interviewed West, 58, over the phone while he was on his way to visit Occupy protesters in Seattle. West said he was returning to Union because it is "the institutional expression of my core identity as a prophetic Christian," adding that: "I don’t have that much time, and I want to be able to do precisely what I’m called to do."
Union Theological Seminary is a prestigious divinity school serving historically as an institutional home for liberal Christian theology, in no small part due to the eminence of the faculty it maintains. Faculty member James Cone is one of the most influential voices in the articulation of black theology, including black liberation theology.
In a press release posted on the Union website, president Rev. Dr. Serene Jones had this to say:
"Union has inspired strong public voices which speak to our nation’s ills and ideals -- be they protests against war, poverty, racism, sexism, or other societal scourges…some call Cornel West this generation’s Reinhold Niebuhr (a legendary Union Professor), but I think he’s in a class by himself. Cornel is, quite simply, the leading public theologian of our age."
According to the school, West will teach a "full schedule" of classes in "Philosophy, Theology, Social Change, Community Engagement and Christian Activism."
