Nationalism Then and Now: A Discussion with Former Ambassador Andrew H. Schapiro

Ambassador Andrew Schapiro will explore his mother’s story of immigration from Czechoslovakia to the United States in 1939. She was left as a small child in Prague and was later reunited with her parents in the United States, although most of her family did not get out.

Seven decades later, Schapiro was appointed to serve as the representative for the country that saved his mother in the country which she escaped. In his role as ambassador, Schapiro witnessed the return of populism and nationalism in the Czech Republic and Eastern Europe and will address these contemporary challenges.

Museum Members $5 | Non-members $8

Doors Open at 6:40 pm

Free Parking – Space is Limited

Andrew Schapiro served as U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic from August 2014 to January 2017. Ambassador Schapiro attended Yale University and Harvard Law School, and obtained an M.A. from Oxford University, which he attended as a Marshall Scholar. He served as a Law Clerk to Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and to Justice Harry Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court. As a public-interest lawyer in the office of the Federal Public Defender in New York City, he defended individuals charged with federal crimes who could not afford to hire their own attorneys.

Ambassador Schapiro has served on the Board of Directors of the Chicago Low -Income Housing Trust Fund, the Criminal Justice Act Advisory Board of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the Board of Directors of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, and the Advisory Board of the Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States. He was also a member of the Democratic National Committee’s National Finance Committee and its 2012 Platform Committee.

Sponsored by Dori Frankel Steigman and Jason Steigman. Offered in connection with Stitching Histories From the Holocaust, an exhibit on display at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, April 8 – September 16, 2018.