Holocaust and genocide researchers are engaged in a vigorous debate concerning the uniqueness of the Holocaust and the appropriateness of comparing this event to others. They concur, however, in criticizing comparisons to the Holocaust made by activists, characterizing these comparisons as carelessly reasoned and self-interested. We use a U.S. national survey to identify which comparisons to the Holocaust are most salient to the public. Further, we test hypotheses about possible motivations or predictors of various comparisons, including influences of education and gender on ways of knowing, effects of race and political orientation on ethnoracial comparisons, and generational differences in collective memory. We conclude that public comparisons to the Holocaust are in concordance with elements of the United Nations' definition of genocide. Comparisons to the Holocaust are best predicted by education, gender, race, and current events. These findings have important implications for Holocaust pedagogy and for our understanding of the public's role in the construction of historical accounts.One of the most vigorous disputes in Holocaust and genocide studies concerns the uniqueness of the Holocaust. To some scholars, comparisons between the Holocaust and other events are anathema, as such comparisons are said to obscure the Jewish particularity of the Holocaust, ironically perpetuating the anti-Semitism that scholarly attention to the Holocaust ought to dispel (e.g., Alexander 1994;Dawidowicz 1981;Eckhardt and Eckhardt 1980;Feingold 1981). To others, specific, theoretically motivated comparisons between the Holocaust and other genocides, ethnocides, politicides, and cases of state-organized terror are valid (Chalk and

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This example of a re ective dialogue was written by a university instructor and ve students who had completed her Sociological Understandings of Genocide class. In this dialogue, they identify numerous ways that silences about race affect relations among course participants, curricular choices and the eld of genocide studies. The authors also suggest means of dispelling such silences, including naming racism when it occurs, mandating curricular change at an elementary school level, and using critical genealogy and other means of encouraging students to see how racism is an immediate problem for all. In taking up their common concerns, the authors' voices often diverge in ways that may be indicative of their various identities and social locations (e.g. as teachers or students, as White or Black women). Moreover, their voices sometimes depart from dialogic exchange into tangents, repetitions, and monologues that, through their complex form, illustrate the complexities and disjunctures of the topics being addressed. Kathy Bischoping: Opening the dialogueWhen a colleague invited me to write 'something on anti-racism and institutions' for a possible book, I thought it would be interesting to turn to a group of students who