Dr. Ruth delivers keynote address for Jewish Awareness Month tonight
Dr. Ruth Westheimer, world-renowned author, lecturer, and sex therapist will be at Virginia Tech this evening to provide the keynote address launching the university's first Jewish Awareness Month celebration.
Westheimer will give her presentation at 7:30 p.m. in Burruss Hall auditorium. Tickets are available at the Squires Student Center ticket office and are $3 for students and $5 for the general public.
Westheimer is a holocaust survivor and child of German parents who perished at the hands of the Nazis. At the age of seventeen, she immigrated to Israel and fought for the country’s independence as part of the Haganah, the Jewish underground resistance. She immigrated to the United States in 1956 and subsequently obtained her Masters Degree in sociology from the Graduate Faculty of the New School of Social Research.
In 1970, Westheimer received a Doctorate of Education in the interdisciplinary study of the family from Columbia University Teacher's College. Currently, Westheimer is a professor and lecturer at New York University, Princeton University, and Yale University. She has won numerous awards and honors for her efforts to raise sexual literacy and has twice been named “College Lecturer of the Year.”
The Jewish Awareness Month celebration, which is coordinated through the office of Multicultural Programs and Services, honors 4,000 years of history and humor in the Jewish community, and runs from March 15 to April 22. Westheimer's appearance is sponsored by Hillel at Virginia Tech, the Virginia Tech Union, the Jewish Awareness Month Committee, Residential Leadership Community, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Alliance, the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, Judaic Studies, Psychology Department, the Women’s Center, and the Office of Multicultural Affairs.
Founded in 1872 as a land-grant college, Virginia Tech is the most comprehensive university in the Commonwealth of Virginia and is among the top research universities in the nation. Today, Virginia Tech’s eight colleges are dedicated to quality, innovation, and results through teaching, research, and outreach activities. At its 2,600-acre main campus located in Blacksburg and other campus centers in Northern Virginia, Southwest Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Roanoke, Virginia Tech enrolls more than 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries in 180 academic degree programs.
