Aivars Stranga is professor and chair of the Department of History at the University of Latvia. He is the author of seven monographs and more than 150 scholarly and general publications on Latvian domestic and foreign policy and international relations between 1918 and 1940, and Latvian foreign policy from 1991 to 2000. Professor Stranga was a distinguished visiting professor at Stanford in 2003, teaching courses on Baltic History and the History of the Holocaust in the Baltics.

Jointly sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe, Stanford Humanities Center, Department of History, Taube Center for Jewish Studies, and Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.