President Jimmy Carter's Commission on the Holocaust, and a founding member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Academic and professional career Menachem Rosensaft received his B.A. degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1971, together with an M.A. degree in creative writing from the university's Writing Seminars. From 1972 until 1975, he was an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Jewish Studies at the City University of New York and assisted Professor Elie Wiesel in his courses on Holocaust literature and Hasidism. He received a second M.A. degree in modern European history from Columbia University in 1975, and in 1979, he received his J.D. degree from the Columbia University School of Law, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and Book Review Editor of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. After clerking for two years for Whitman Knapp, United States District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York, he spent fourteen years as an international and securities litigator at several major New York law firms and at an international bank. He is multilingual, has broad experience in European, Middle Eastern, and South American legal, commercial, and political issues, and has conducted sensitive negotiations with senior government officials at both national and municipal levels. In 1995, he became Senior International Counsel for The Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, and from 1996 to 2000 was executive vice president of the Jewish Renaissance Foundation, Inc. As a foundation executive, he was responsible for the development, coordination and funding of educational and cultural projects in Eastern and Central Europe, including the acquisition and restoration of landmark buildings for use as a Jewish cultural center in Warsaw, Poland, and developing innovative educational programs for Russian-Jewish immigrants to Germany. In 1999, he was honored by the mayor of Warsaw for "inspiring work in city planning and preservation of historical monuments". From September 2000 until December 2003, Rosensaft was a partner in the New York office of a national law firm, representing, among other clients, the audit committee and independent directors of a New York Stock Exchange listed company in connection with an internal investigation of accounting irregularities, a related proceeding brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and class action litigation. In January 2004 he joined a financial services firm in New York City as special counsel, becoming its general counsel in May 2005. He played a key role in guiding the firm through