In Memoriam: Alice Lyons Eckardt, 1923-2020

Alice Eckardt, professor emerita of religious studies and the founder of the Jewish studies program at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, died earlier this summer in Coopersburg, Pennsylvania. She was 97 years old.

Professor Eckardt was a graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio. Twenty-two years later, she earned a master’s degree at Lehigh University. She joined the Lehigh academic community in 1972 as a lecturer and had been promoted to the rank of full professor by the time of her retirement in 1987.

Professor Eckardt coauthored three books with her husband Roy, who was also a professor of religious studies at Lehigh University: Encounter With Israel: A Challenge to Conscience (Association Press, 1970), Long Night’s Journey Into Day: Life and Faith After the Holocaust (Wayne State University Press, 1982), and A Revised Retrospective on the Holocaust (Wayne State University Press, 1988).

In 1979, Professor Eckardt was appointed special consultant to the President’s Commission on the Holocaust by its chair Elie Wiesel and also served as a special advisor to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.