White-Niemoller Award
The White-Niemoller Award provides recognition and financial assistance to educators to participate in Cohen Center educational outreach opportunities, including but not limited to: workshops, CCHGS-led travel, and the biennial summer institute. Participants are expected return to their schools and/or communities energized by their experience to become active interpreters of the mission of the Cohen Center in order to build a more responsible future and continue to build communities where respect and justice thrive.
Applications for this award are accepted on a rolling basis each fiscal year beginning on July 1st and decisions will be made based on factors such as the amount of the request, the availability of funds, and the impact on the educator and their community. Once all of the funds allocated for the fiscal year have been awarded, no additional applications will be accepted until the next fiscal year. Funding cannot be awarded retroactively.
For the 2024-2025 academic year, the maximum amount of funding that an applicant can request is $500. Applicants seeking funding for multiple programs will need to submit separate applicants for each one; priority will be given, when possible, to first-time applicants. Award decisions are based upon the anticipated impact of the program upon the educator and their students/community.
The fellowship honors the late James J. White and Sibylle Sarah Niemoeller von Sell.
Eligibility and Requirements
This award is available by application to educators who do not have professional development funding to support their participation in fee-based programs or workshops organized by the Cohen Center. The continuation of this award relies on donations to sustain the pool of funds that are available each year. Consideration for this fellowship shall be given to an educator; this may include current faculty, staff, and students at Keene State College. The amount of funding is determined at the discretion of the Cohen Center and cannot exceed the cost of the program to be attended.
Educators must provide a clear plan for how they will share the results of their participation with the broader community. The final product will be agreed upon in consultation with the Director.
For additional information about the Awards, please contact the Cohen Center team at cohencenter@keene.edu.
About James J. White and Sibylle Sarah Niemoeller von Sell
James White, Keene State College Class of 1984 and brother of the Coordinator of Education Outreach for the Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies at Keene State College and creator of this fellowship, Tom White ‘95, was a man of integrity. James was deeply committed to his Roman Catholic faith tradition and his family. His dedication to truth and honesty inspires the work of the Coordinator of Educational Outreach. He genuinely believed in the mission of Pope John Paul II to reaffirm the dignity of all human persons. He had an uncompromised sense of justice and as a teacher wanted people to responsibly confront prejudice and injustice. As a secondary school teacher, James demonstrated a deep commitment to civic leadership.
Sibylle Sarah Niemoeller von Sell, writer, lecturer and widow of anti-Hitler pastor Martin Niemoeller. She is a friend and inspiration of the Cohen Center’s Coordinator of Educational Outreach. Sibylle was born to an old highly esteemed, Prussian aristocratic family. The family was staunchly and uncompromisingly anti-Nazi, even before Hitler came to power. Sibylle voan Sell was expelled from high school for refusing to join the Hitler Youth. Later she suffered interrogation and physical abuse by the Gestapo for her family’s connection to the unsuccessful 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. The pastor of the van Sell family’s Lutheran church was Martin Niemoeller, founder of the anti-Nazi Confessing Church in 1933, whose public condemnation of the Nazi regime brought him such international attention that Hitler constrained not to have him executed. He was, however, arrested and spent the war years in the concentration camps of Sachsenhausen and Dachau.
After the war, Sibylle emigrated to the U.S., where she and Niemoeller were reacquainted and eventually married. After the death of her famous husband, she converted to Judaism and took the name Sarah - a meaningful gesture, she said, because it is the same name used by the Nazis as a derogatory reference to Jewish women.
Jim and Sibylle share a common, unwavering dedication to confronting evil and seeking truth. They symbolize the search for reconciliation, dignity, and justice through their faith traditions.
