Deborah Lipstadt

Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt, Dorot professor of Holocaust Studies at Emory University, has published and taught about the Holocaust for close to 40 years. She is probably most widely known because of the libel lawsuit brought against her (1996) by David Irving for having called him a Holocaust denier. A ten-week trial in London (2000), ended in an overwhelming victory for Professor Lipstadt and the Daily Telegraph (London) described the trial as having "done for the new century what the Nuremberg tribunals or the Eichmann trial did for earlier generations.” Professor Lipstadt’s TED talk about the trial has received well over one million views.  The movie Denial, starring Rachel Weisz and Tom Wilkinson, with a screenplay by David Hare, tells the story of this legal battle.  It is based on her book History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier (Harper Collins 2006) and recently reissued as Denial (Harper Collins 2016).

 

Professor Lipstadt is currently writing a book, Antisemitism: Here and Now, to be published 2018.  She has written most recently Holocaust: An American Understanding  (Rutgers, 2016) and her previous books include The Eichmann Trial (Schocken, 2011) and Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust (Free Press, 1986). At Emory, Lipstadt has won the Emery Williams Teaching Award.  She was selected for the award by alumni as the teacher who had most influenced them.   

 

Professor Lipstadt was an historical consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She has held Presidential appointment to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council (from Presidents Clinton and Obama) and was asked by President George W. Bush to represent the White House at the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.  She was part of a committee that advised Secretary of State Madeline Albright on matters of religious freedom abroad.