SPARTANBURG, S.C. – Author, professor of law and retired Israel Defense Forces officer Amos N. Guiora will share the experiences of his family during the Holocaust and will examine sexual assault cases to examine bystander intervention during a lecture Monday, April 16, at Wofford College.

Guiora’s talk, “The Crime of Complicity,” will be held at 7 p.m. in Leonard Auditorium in Main Building on Wofford’s campus. It is free and open to the public.

A professor of law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah and a retired lieutenant colonel in the Israel Defense Forces, Guiora will examine such questions as: “If you are a bystander and witness to a crime, should intervention to prevent that crime be a legal obligation or is moral responsibility enough?”

“Professor Guiora provides insight into the moral and legal questions that touch all of our lives from time to time,” Wofford President Nayef Samhat says. “It’s important to hear his message as he addresses these profound questions and the bystander-victim relationship from a deeply personal and legal perspective, focusing on the Holocaust and then exploring cases in contemporary society.”

Guiora will share the experiences of his parents and grandparents during the Holocaust and will examine sexual assault cases at Vanderbilt University and Stanford University and other crimes in which bystanders chose not to intervene. He recommends that we make the obligation to intervene the law, and, thus, non-intervention a crime.

Guiora is involved in the effort to legislate Holocaust-genocide education in Utah public schools. He is the author of several books, including “Freedom from Religion: Rights and National Security” (2009) and “Tolerating Intolerance: The Price of Protecting Extremism” (2014).

The lecture is sponsored by the Department of Government and International Affairs at Wofford.