The Institute for Tolerance Studies is celebrating 20 years of programming providing a venue for research, publishing, lectures, and learning. The Institute for Tolerance Studies was established as a non-profit 501-c-3 organization in 2005 with the purpose of promoting social justice, tolerance, respect, and acceptance between people of diverse backgrounds, addressing issues of antisemitism, intolerance, racism, hatred and bigotry. It was founded by Ron Duncan Hart and Gloria Abella Ballen with Ira Schlezinger and Fa Abrantes-Pais acting as founding board members.
The original initiative of the Institute was to serve as an adjunct institute associated with Oklahoma City University to create programs and curriculum materials on tolerance and understanding. University President Tom McDaniel and Professors Mark Davies, Dean of the Wimberly School of Religion and David R. Evans, Dean of the Petree College of Arts and Sciences took important roles in this initiative. Before this arrangement could be finalized, we had decided to move to Santa Fe which meant that the alliance with Oklahoma City University could not be completed.
In the 2006-2007 academic year we started a series of lectures under the name of Jewish University in Oklahoma City and invited speakers from local universities, rabbis, and other local scholars to speak on issues of importance to the Jewish community. Professors Helene Harpman and Misha Klein, Dr. Carl Rubenstein, and Rabbi Ovadia Goldman were important collaborators with those lectures in Oklahoma City.
We transferred the offices of the Institute to Santa Fe in the 2007-08 year and established Gaon Books as the publishing arm of the Institute, addressing issues of diversity and tolerance. Early books included African Saga by anthropologist Nina S. de Friedemann and Praxis and Ambiguity of the Enemy on oppression of political thought in Colombia by author Fernando Garavito, which won the best book of 2007 award from the New Mexico Book Awards. The Institute has published more than 65 titles.
Between 2008 and 2010 we collaborated with the Santa Fe School Board doing teacher training sessions and classroom visits about Jewish traditions and holidays. During that time we also worked with the New Mexico Department of Education to develop teaching materials on Jewish history in New Mexico with special attention to the book, Guardians of Hidden Traditions by Isabel Medina Sandoval. Those materials were made available to teachers statewide.
In 2010 we established the Jewish Learning Channel on YouTube under the auspices of the Institute, and we currently have over 160 films, including recordings of speakers and short documentaries on Jewish life from the American Southwest to Moroccan Jewish life and history. The Jewish Learning Channel has over 1600 subscribers with an annual viewing audience over 20,000.
Along with Gaon Books, we organized the Santa Fe Jewish Book Council in 2013-14 under the auspices of the Institute and established a speakers’ program for book authors and gave Lifetime Achievements Awards to local authors including Robert Sacks and Stan Hordes. By 1916-17 this speaker program was evolving into a broader series bringing speakers by authors outside of New Mexico. First was Prof. Avinoam Patt and later Professors David Graizbord, and Ilan Stavans. In August of 2018 we organized a Yom Limmud with Avinoam Patt, Vanessa Paloma Elbaz, and Joseph Skibell, and since then we have had monthly speakers as the Santa Fe Distinguished Lecture Series. Yehuda and Nurit Patt were key supporters as the speaker series developed. They had a key role in inviting distinguished scholars such as Prof. Shalom Sabar and Ambassador Zion Evrony. Pat Shapiro, Camilla Mandler, and others were important collaborators.
In 2019 we invited the author Deborah Lipstadt to speak on antisemitism to a standing room only audience at the James A Little Theater in Santa Fe. She was followed that year by Professors Kenneth Seeskin, Misha Klein, Alan Levinson, and Tomer Persico. During those years we began collaborating with the Santa Fe Jewish Film Festival, Temple Beth Shalom, and Santa Fe Middle East Watch recording their invited speakers for the Jewish Learning Channel. We recorded Matti Friedman, Benny Morris, David Lehrer, Clive Lipchin, David Myers, Ron Dermer, Dennis Ross, and Eric Rentschler among others.
With COVID we transformed the Distinguished Lectures from a local series of lectures to an international online lecture series with leading scholars and an audience that extends from Australia across the United States and Canada to the U.K. and Israel. Between 2018 and 2025 we have had speakers, ranging from Pulitzer Prize nominees and winners to Guggenheim fellows, a Dean, an ambassador, multiple National Jewish Book Award winners, and leading international lawyers and authors among others. The quality of the speakers has created international recognition for the Santa Fe Distinguished Lecture Series.
Bonnie Ellinger, Marcia Torobin, and others have been important collaborators as we transformed the lecture series to the international online format. The extraordinary support of donors from Santa Fe and across the United States has made this possible, and their support has helped make the Santa Fe Distinguished Lecture Series successful.
We appreciate the more than 100 authors and speakers and 100s of people in films on the Jewish Learning Channel who have contributed their information and insights to the Institute for Tolerance Studies to address these issues of diversity over the last 20 years. We thank all of you who have made these programs possible. Today we are reaching audiences of tens of thousands of people annually with information on respect and tolerance for diversity.
Ron Duncan Hart and Gloria Abella Ballen
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