1. Deborah Esther Lipstadt was born on March 18,1947 and is an American historian and diplomat, best known as author of the books Denying the Holocaust, History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier, The Eichmann Trial, and Antisemitism: Here and Now.
Deborah Lipstadt served as the United States Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism from 2022 to 2025.
Deborah Lipstadt was confirmed by voice-vote on March 30,2022, and sworn in on May 3,2022.
Deborah Lipstadt was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023.
Deborah Lipstadt was born in New York City to a Jewish family, the daughter of Miriam and Erwin Deborah Lipstadt.
Deborah Lipstadt's mother was born in Canada, and her father, a salesman, was born in Germany.
Deborah Lipstadt has an older sister, Helene, a historian, and a younger brother, Nathaniel, an investor on Wall Street.
Deborah Lipstadt studied with Rabbi Emanuel Rackman at Temple Shaarei Tefillah.
Deborah Lipstadt completed a Bachelor of Arts in American history at the City College of New York in 1969.
Deborah Lipstadt then enrolled at Brandeis University where she completed her master's degree in 1972 and then her Ph.
Deborah Lipstadt then received a research fellowship from the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, during which she studied Holocaust denial, and taught at Occidental College part time.
Deborah Lipstadt then became an assistant professor of religion at Emory University in Atlanta in January 1993, becoming the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies that fall.
Deborah Lipstadt helped to create the Institute for Jewish Studies there.
Deborah Lipstadt considered teaching as a visiting professor at Columbia University but didn't take the post as she felt at risk and Columbia would use her as a sop to show it was fighting antisemitism when that was not true.
In May 2021, Deborah Lipstadt was considered for an ambassadorship position at the Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism in the Biden administration.
Deborah Lipstadt's nomination was supported by all committee Democrats, as well as senators Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio.
Deborah Lipstadt was part of the Biden administration team that launched the US National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism on May 25,2023.
On October 17,2023, in a joint statement with Michal Cotler-Wunsh, published by the US State Department, Deborah Lipstadt condemned the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
In September 2024, Deborah Lipstadt attended the Jewish New Year ceremony at the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC with Israeli Ambassador Michael Herzog, Zioness founder Amanda Berman, and cybertechnology official Anne Neuberger.
In February 2007, Deborah Lipstadt warned of "soft-core denial" at the Zionist Federation's annual fundraising dinner in London.
Along the same lines, Deborah Lipstadt has criticized the German philosopher and historian Ernst Nolte for engaging in what she calls "soft-core denial" of the Holocaust, arguing that Nolte practices an even more dangerous form of negationism than the Holocaust deniers.
In late 2011, Deborah Lipstadt attacked American and Israeli politicians for what she called their invocation of the Holocaust for contemporary political purposes, something she thought mangled history.
Deborah Lipstadt rebuked Republican Party presidential candidates for speeches that 'pandered' to the Evangelical constituency, as much as it did to the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Deborah Lipstadt returned to the theme of soft-core Holocaust denial in The Atlantic when responding to the Trump administration's statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27,2017, which was condemned for the absence of a specific mention of Jews, as the principal victims of the Holocaust or of antisemitism itself.
In February 2019, Deborah Lipstadt resigned her membership in the Young Israel synagogue movement because its national council president defended Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's facilitation of a merger between the Bayit Yehudi party and the extremist Otzma Yehudit party.
In 1997, Deborah Lipstadt received the Emory Williams teaching award for excellence in teaching.
Deborah Lipstadt was awarded the 2005 National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category for History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier and the 2019 National Jewish Book Award in Education and Jewish Identity for Antisemitism: Here and Now.
Deborah Lipstadt has received honorary doctorates from a number of institutions, including Ohio Wesleyan University, John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York, Yeshiva University, and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, among others.