Elie Wiesel’s son, the Eckerd College professor who taught alongside him for more than two decades and the man who oversees his personal archive will headline the inaugural Wiesel Symposium, a two-day gathering Nov. 15-16 in St. Petersburg.
Wiesel Symposium 2026: We Are Living Lessons, presented by the Florida Holocaust Museum in partnership with the Elie Wiesel Foundation and Eckerd College, will feature lectures, roundtable discussions and excursions centered on the humanitarian teachings of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor and his wife, Marion.
More than 200 attendees from the United States and Canada are expected to stay at the Vinoy Resort & Golf Club and shuttle between the hotel, the museum and Eckerd.
The setting is fitting. Wiesel taught at Eckerd for more than 20 years, and the Florida Holocaust Museum holds the largest collection of Elie and Marion Wiesel’s personal artifacts.
Speakers include Elisha Wiesel, chairman of the Elie Wiesel Foundation; Michael Igel, chair of the museum’s Elie Wiesel Archive & Legacy Council; and Carolyn Ross Johnston, who taught 24 Winter Term courses with Wiesel at Eckerd from 1993 to 2016.
“History remembers Professor Wiesel the orator, the author, the conscience of a generation. We want people to meet the man underneath all of that: the husband, father, teacher and friend,” Igel said. “Once you meet him, their life’s work stops feeling like history to be taught and starts feeling like a responsibility to be lived.”
Above all, Igel said, Wiesel considered himself a teacher and liked to be called Professor Wiesel.
“He was a dignitary, but a humble man who had a recipe to live despite what he and his family had gone through,” Igel said. “There was no room for hate, just learning how we deal with all of these things to make a better world for our children.”
Johnston agreed that teaching came first for Wiesel.
“I’d pick him up at the Don CeSar and go to my office to prepare for class, and he would be on the phone, with calls from Bill Clinton, Mitterrand or Mandela, and he would talk to them briefly and then he would say, ‘I must go to my class now. I’ll call you afterwards,’ so you could see how focused he was and dedicated to the class,” she said.
Igel said Wiesel’s teachings speak to anyone facing hate and discrimination, not only those targeted by antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment.
“Right now, it’s more rampant than ever before, here in America and in the world,” he said. “What do we do about this? What did Wiesel say about Israel, genocide and the other challenges we never thought we would see again after World War II? This symposium will give attendees insights and ideas, a recipe for a life of service and advocacy.”
The symposium opens Sunday, Nov. 15 with a welcome reception at the Vinoy, followed by discussions with Johnston, Igel, Elisha Wiesel and Eckerd students who knew Wiesel as a teacher.
Elisha Wiesel, who has led efforts to revitalize the foundation’s mission and speaks publicly against antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric, will lead a session titled “Fireside Chat With Elisha Wiesel: What My Parents’ Words Mean to Me.” It will examine his father’s words and how they can be turned into real-world advocacy and life lessons.
Monday’s program focuses on Wiesel’s business ethics and lessons for daily life, followed by a reception and tour at the Florida Holocaust Museum with museum president and CEO Eric B. Stillman, who described Wiesel’s teachings as an “ethical compass for world leaders and students alike for decades.”
Igel, a local attorney and the grandson of three Holocaust survivors, has served on the museum’s board since 2014, including stints as board chair and interim CEO, and is now board chair emeritus. He oversees the museum’s Wiesel Collection of artifacts, writings and personal effects, which the Elie Wiesel Foundation entrusted to the museum in 2023.
Johnston is a professor of American studies and history and the Elie Wiesel Professor of Humane Letters at Eckerd. She is a recipient of Woodrow Wilson and Danforth fellowships.
Her partnership with Wiesel began in 1992, when he was teaching at Boston University and was invited to teach a Winter Term course at Eckerd.
“In a faculty meeting, the dean asked if anyone would like to apply to teach with Professor Wiesel because he wanted to team-teach, so I went home and wrote a proposal called ‘Remembering and Forgetting: Personal & Political Transformation,’ and it was selected,” Johnston said.
When she called Wiesel to discuss the class, she told him she had been so nervous about speaking with him that she could hardly sleep.
“He replied, ‘I’m sure when I get to know you, I won’t be able to sleep either,’” she said, “and that began our 24-year friendship.”
Fact box
Wiesel Symposium 2026: We Are Living Lessons
When: Sunday and Monday, Nov. 15-16
Where: The Vinoy Resort & Golf Club, St. Petersburg, with excursions to Eckerd College, the Florida Holocaust Museum and Marina Bay. Transportation is included.
Details: Two days of sessions, roundtable discussions and excursions exploring the humanitarian teachings of Elie and Marion Wiesel through the voices of those who knew them and those carrying their work forward.
Tickets: $595 for both days; $325 for Monday only.