Eric D. Weitz (June 15, 1953 – July 1, 2021) was an American historian.

Education

He studied at

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campu ...

for his MA, and received his PhD supervised by

Norman Naimark Norman M. Naimark (; born 1944, New York City) is an American historian. He is the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of Eastern European Studies at Stanford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He writes on modern Easte ...

. His dissertation was "Conflict in the Ruhr: Workers and Socialist Politics in Essen, 1910–1925".

Themes of research and writing

Weitz specialized in

German history The Germani tribes i.e. Germanic tribes are now considered to be related to the Jastorf culture before expanding and interacting with the other peoples. The concept of a region for Germanic tribes is traced to time of Julius Caesar, a Roman gen ...

Soviet history The history of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union (USSR) reflects a period of change for both Russia and the world. Though the terms "Soviet Russia" and "Soviet Union" often are synonymous in everyday speech (either acknowledging the dominance ...

, and

genocide studies Genocide studies is an academic field of study that researches genocide. Genocide became a field of study in the mid-1940s, with the work of Raphael Lemkin, who coined ''genocide'' and started genocide research, and its primary subjects were the ...

. According to historian Sarah K. Danielsson, Weitz's historical "work on genocide had always grappled with the root causes of mass violence and extermination, and it led him to look at the history of human rights." He edited "Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity” at

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial su ...

Political views

Eric Weitz joined a number of scholars in condemning

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...

in 2016. He compared Donald Trump's

right-wing populism Right-wing populism, also called national populism and right-wing nationalism, is a political ideology that combines right-wing politics and populist rhetoric and themes. Its rhetoric employs anti-elitist sentiments, opposition to the Establi ...

to the political atmosphere in the

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...

. Weitz criticized what he saw as increasing

political polarization Political polarization (spelled ''polarisation'' in British English) is the divergence of political attitudes away from the center, towards ideological extremes. Most discussions of polarization in political science consider polarization in the c ...

Works

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Weitz, Eric D. 1953 births 2021 deaths 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers City College of New York faculty CUNY Graduate Center faculty American male non-fiction writers