Doug and Margee Greenberg

Translating Research to the Public Arena

Douglas and Margee Greenberg may have ended their day-to-day involvement with USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education when he stepped down as executive director in 2008, but they remain deeply committed donors. Their latest gift established the Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellowship, an endowed fund providing permanent support for graduate or post-graduate students advancing testimony-based research.

Doug Greenberg oversaw the Institute’s move to USC, a task he calls “the hardest and the best thing” he did during his eight-year tenure before leaving to become Distinguished Professor of History and Executive Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University, his alma mater.

“One of the key reasons for creating the fellowship is the fact that the Institute is now based at a research university,” explains Margee Greenberg. “We wanted to support the academic side of the Institute’s work in a more robust way.”

The Institute’s educational mission is something both care passionately about. He has focused much of his illustrious career on translating scholarly research for use in schools and the public arena. Her background includes experience in public secondary education.

“Our principal objective is that the Shoah Foundation archive become a truly worldwide resource for scholarship,” he says. “The practice of historical scholarship will soon be transformed by the use of visual images, especially moving images. The Shoah Foundation archive is actually precedent-setting at that level as well.”

The couple’s endowed gift will ensure a consistent funding stream is forever available to further scholarly research at USC Shoah Foundation for generations to come.

The Greenbergs consider their ongoing support an inadequate expression of what the Institute means to them. “It’s a debt we can never fully repay,” says Doug Greenberg.