ASU alum to lead center for Holocaust education at Seton Hill

Arizona State University alumnus Tim Crain has been appointed director of the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education (NCCHE) at Seton Hill University. Crain is an assistant professor in Seton Hill’s program in genocide and Holocaust studies.

Seton Hill University was a pioneer in the national Catholic movement toward Holocaust studies as it established the center in 1987. The mission of the center is “to counter antisemitism and to foster Catholic-Jewish relations by making the fruits of the Holocaust scholarship accessible to educators at every level, especially in Catholic colleges and universities throughout the United States.”

Crain sees a broader mission for the center, "stressing the dangers of intolerance of any people." He would like to expand the focus of NCCHE to include the study of intolerance toward Islam.

Crain’s background as an Irish Catholic may surprise some given his field, but it has resulted in a richness in his understanding of it and of the consequences of intolerance toward any religion. He earned a doctorate at Arizona State University in 1998 with specializations in modern Jewish, modern European and modern Middle Eastern history.