Deborah Lipstadt

Deborah Esther Lipstadt (born March 18, 1947) is an American historian and politician. Lipstadt served as the United States Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism from 2022 until 2025 during the Joe Biden administration. 

Overview

Deborah Lipstadt is best known as author of the books Denying the Holocaust (1993), History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier (2005), The Eichmann Trial (2011), and Antisemitism: Here and Now (2019). She was a professor at Emory University.Lipstadt at Jewish woman archive Retrieved 19 January 2019.

Career

Clinton government

Lipstadt worked for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). In 1994, President of the United States Bill Clinton nominated her to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council (USHMC). 

Biden government

In July 2021, President Joe Biden nominated her to be the United States Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating anti-Semitism. She was confirmed by voice-vote on March 30, 2022 and sworn in on May 3, 2022. 

Views

Lipstadt has criticized the German historian Ernst Nolte for practicing "soft-core Holocaust denial", saying that Nolte promotes a more dangerous form of denialism than Holocaust deniers:"Denial of the Holocaust and Immoral Equivalence".  The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (August 1, 2003).

In October 2019, The New York Times published a letter by Lipstadt, prompted by Peter Handke getting awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, in which she wrote that the Nobel Committee awarded Handke a platform "he does not deserve [...] the public does not need him to have [...] false claims must have some legitimacy". In January 2025, Lipstadt said in Brussels:

Related pages

 David Hirsh
 Jan Grabowski
 Shimon Redlich
 Jeffrey Kopstein
 Saul Friedländer
 Holocaust denial

References

Category:1947 births
Category:Living people
Category:American historians
Category:Emory University faculty
Category:Writers from New York City
Category:Politicians from New York City
Category:American human rights activists
Category:Ambassadors of the United States
Category:Academics from Washington (state)
Category:Democratic Party (United States) politicians