Deborah E. Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. She is the author of several award-winning books, including: Antisemitism: Here and Now (a National Book Award Winner); History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving (a National Jewish Book Award winner); Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory; and Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–1945.
Lipstadt is most widely known because of the libel lawsuit brought against her by the prominent holocaust denier David Irving, where after a ten-week trial in London the judge found Irving to be a “neo-Nazi polemicist” who “perverts” history and engages in “racist” and “anti-Semitic” discourse. The Daily Telegraph described the trial as having "done for the new century what the Nuremberg tribunals or the Eichmann trial did for earlier generations." The movie Denial, starring Rachel Weisz and Tom Wilkenson with a screenplay by David Hare, tells the story of this legal battle.
Lipstadt served as a historical consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and helped design the section of the Museum dedicated to the American Response to the Holocaust. 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 60 the 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.
Lipstadt is frequently quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Forward, and Tablet. She regularly appears on BBC, CNN, NPR, and PBS among many others. She lives in Atlanta.
