Guide to Specialists

Elizabeth "Lili" A. Cole
Program Officer, Jennings Randolph Fellowship Program

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Phone: (202) 429-4746

E-mail: ecole@usip.org

Languages: Chinese, Russian, French, Reading knowledge of Spanish, German, Polish

Elizabeth "Lili" A. Cole joined USIP in January 2008 as a program officer in the Jennings Randolph Fellowship program. For the past two years, she was assistant director of the TeachAsia Program in the Asia Society’s Education division, with responsibilities for curriculum creation and professional development. While at the Asia Society, she oversaw the production of an NEH-funded curriculum guide on Islam in Southeast Asia and planned and led a month-long Fulbright-Hays educators’ tour to China.

From 2000-2005, she was a senior program officer in studies and education at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. While there, she developed an international research program called History and the Politics of Reconciliation, which studied how societies reckon with difficult pasts. Her work in education at the council included developing faculty development seminars, including two in China on globalization, and one in Poland on education for tolerance and reconciliation. Prior to joining the Carnegie Council, she was coordinator of the Religion, Human Rights and Religious Freedom Program at Columbia University's Center for the Study of Human Rights and director of the Internship Program at the National Forum Foundation (in Washington, D.C.). Cole also served as assistant program officer for Asia, focusing on China, Cambodia, Indonesia and Central Asia, at the National Endowment for Democracy.

Dr. Cole holds a Ph.D. in Slavic languages and literatures from Yale University and a B.A. in english literature with a concentration in asian studies from Swarthmore College. She has studied in Poland, Russia and Germany and lived and worked in China, in both Wuhan and Beijing.

Publications:

• Common History-Contentious Memories. Relations between Jews and non-Jews in the Soviet Occupied Territories of Poland, September 1939 – July 1941, co-edited with Elazar Barkan and Kai Struve Leipziger (University of Leipzig Press, forthcoming).
• Interweaving Cultures: Islam in Southeast Asia. A Guide for Teachers and Students (Asia Society, 2007).
• "Transitional Justice and the Reform of History Education," The International Journal of Transitional Justice, (Spring, 2007).
• Teaching the Violent Past: History Education and Reconciliation (editor of multi-author volume) (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).
• "Unite or Divide? The Challenges of Teaching History in Societies Emerging from Violent Conflict" (co-author) (USIP Special Report 163, June 2006).
• "After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust, Eva Hoffman," Ethics and International Affairs (Vol. 18, # 2, 2004).
• Human Rights Dialogue (guest editor) (No. 10, Fall 2003 – "Violence Against Women").
• Protecting the Human Rights of Religious Minorities in Eastern Europe, co-edited with Peter Danchin (Columbia University Press, 2002).
• "Shop of Horrors," The New York Times, October 21, 2003.
• "'To Little Brightness, From Rainbow'-China's New Era," The Christian Science Monitor, November 4, 1992.
• "Dissent Within the Great Wall," The Christian Science Monitoru, June 3, 1992.