Hay of Seaton Memorial Lecture

Malcolm Hay (1881 - 1962), soldier and scholar, was the last Laird of Seaton, an extensive group of estates in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

Severely wounded in France and taken prisoner in the First World War, but repatriated as being deemed too incapacitated to be of any further service to his country, he thereupon became Director of Military Intelligence 1B at the War Office for the remainder of that war. In retrospect, his work there proved to be the first indication of a passion that was to consume his life; his search for the truth and his battle to establish it.

During the Second World War, while devoting himself to raising large sums of money for the relief of prisoners of war in Germany and Italy, he became increasingly disturbed at the reports coming in from Germany of the wholesale massacre of European Jewry at the hands of the Nazis. Already a distinguished historian and author, this prompted him to learn Hebrew and read widely about the Jews, in order to come to grips with the history of anti-Semitism. The result, a highly controversial book The Foot of Pride was published in the USA in 1950, reprinted in 1960 and 1975 as Thy Brother's Blood, and finally in 1981 as The Roots of Christian Anti-Semitism.

After his death, his widow, Alice Ivy Hay of Seaton, worked unceasingly to continue his work. This was expressed most clearly in 1981 in the terms of a bequest in her will to the University of Aberdeen, which was to be used exclusively to promote a greater understanding and knowledge of the history and culture of the Jewish people.

2019

Professor Shirli Gilbert, UCL

South African Jews, the Holocaust, Apartheid and Israel.

Read more about the delivered lecture here .

2016

Professor Kenneth Hart Green, University of Toronto

Did the Holocaust Reveal Something New About Man? The Post-Holocaust Thought of Emil Fackenheim

Listen to the audio recording of the Aberdeen iteration of Professor Green's lecture below.

2012

His Most Eminent Highness, Fra' Matthew Festing, Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta

Opportunities for Cooperation between the Faiths of the Middle East: an humanitarian view from the Order of Malta

2010

Professor Jon D. Levenson, Harvard University

Jews and Christians as Abrahamic Communities

2007

Professor Zygmunt Bauman, University of Leeds

Jews and other Europeans - Old and New

2003

The Right Reverend Richard Harries, The Bishop of Oxford

Jewish and Christian Approaches to Suffering

1999

Professor David Novak, Professor Jewish Studies, University of Toronto

Judaism and the Moral Crisis of the West

1996

The Very Reverend Professor T. F. Stransky

Opening for Reconciliation in the Holy Land Today

1993

Abba Eban

Breakthrough to Peace in the Middle East

1988

Cardinal Willebrands

The Church Facing Modern Anti-Semitism