PITTSBURGH ― David Shapira said the Tree of Life shooting, the worst antisemitic event in U.S. history, helped him redefine success as not about avoiding tragedy, but about how one responds to it. “Successful people are people who acknowledge the tragedy, learn from it, get up and try and do something about the future,” Shapira said. He said the Eradicate Hate Global Summit, which began its three-day run Wednesday at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, is rooted in that definition of success. Over 1,200 academics, activists, professionals and global government officials are expected to participate in the event, now in its third year. The summit is grounded in the memorialization of the Tree of Life massacre and pursuing hard action initiatives to combat hate-fueled violence. Early in the day, Shapira, a board member of the summit, asked the attendees to take a moment of silence to commemorate the Tree of Life shooting victims. The summit was founded in the wake of the Tree of Life massacre in 2018. As community activists looked for a way forward, attorney Laura Ellsworth and University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Emeritus Mark Nordenberg formed a group to discuss how to combat antisemitism. In 2021, the first summit launched as a direct result of that group. In its first year, the summit featured 100 speakers – including George W. Bush – and hundreds of attendees. This year it’s operating on a much larger scale.

Photo Credit: Evan Levine/Pittsburgh Media Partnership