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History Lunch Lecture Symposium: Dr. Robert Varady

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University of Arizona History Department poster for the 2026/27 Lunch Lecture Series. Talk: “The Lives of a Budapest Jew: László Weisz, 1908–1995,” by Dr. Robert Varady. Includes book cover and speaker portrait. February 25, 2026, 12:30–1:50 PM, Cesar E. Chavez Building, Room 406A.

When

12:30 – 1:50 p.m., Feb. 25, 2026

Come join us on various Wednesdays this Spring semester for the History Lunch Lecture Symposium. We will gather in Chávez 406a to learn more about our colleagues' scholarship. Additional details will be posted here a week before the event. 

Open to the University community!

For those of you who are unable to attend in person, please use the following Zoom link: https://arizona.zoom.us/j/82733203379

Dr. Robert G. Varady
Robert G. Varady is research professor emeritus of environmental policy and past director of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona. Varady obtained his PhD in 1981, studying 19th century history of developing-country infrastructure (roads, railways, and administration in India) from the University of Arizona. He holds MS and BS degrees in mathematics from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now NYU Tandon School of Engineering) and the City College of New York, respectively. His work mostly has addressed environmental and water-management governance and policy in arid regions, with an emphasis on crossborder issues, especially along the U.S.-Mexico boundary.

Varady has co-edited 13 books, monographs, digests, edited volumes, and journal special issues; and published more than 250 essays and reports (including some 80 peer-reviewed journal articles), mostly on water and environmental governance, policy, and history. He is a Fellow Member of the International Water Resources Association and past president of the International Water History Association (IWHA).

Robert Varady was born as Gábor Weisz in Budapest during the last years of World War II, having spent the final few months in the ghetto with his mother while his father was in forced labor camps. He and his parents moved to Paris, France, when he was four, and then to New York when he was nine. He is fluent in Hungarian and French and has added English, Hindi-Urdu, and Spanish to his language repertoire.

THE BOOK The Lives of a Budapest Jew: László Weisz, 1908-1995
Budapest, 1930s and 1940s. László “Laci” Weisz had an ambitious streak, excelling in school and prospering in business despite modest beginnings. Had he lived in unremarkable times, his life might have qualified as a Hungarian Horatio Alger story. But the Nazi takeover of Germany inspired a series of anti-Jewish laws in Hungary. Laci's employer offered him a choice: accept a demotion and reduction in salary or be fired along with the other Jewish employees. He chose termination, resolving to find a better life for himself and his family in a more welcoming nation. Unfortunately, World War II intervened.

Contacts

John Bauschatz