David W. Blight

David W. Blight received his B.A. from Michigan State University and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He is the Sterling Professor of American History and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University. In 2019, he won the Pulitzer Prize in history for his work, FREDERICK DOUGLASS: PROPHET OF FREEDOM. His RACE AND REUNION: THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICAN MEMORY, 1863-1915, received eight awards, including the Bancroft Prize, the Frederick Douglass Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize and four prizes awarded by the Organization of American Historians. Blight's essays and op-eds have appeared in numerous journals and newspapers. From 2013-2014, he was the Pitt Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge in the UK. For the first seven years of his career Dr. Blight was a high school history teacher in his hometown of Flint, MI. In 2023, he served as president of the Organization of American Historians.