George Fredrickson, one of the leading American scholars on race, will compare and contrast anti-Semitism with racism against people of African descent during a Feb. 27 lecture. Fredrickson will deliver the annual Byrn lecture at 8 p.m. in the Moore Room of the Law School.

Fredrickson, who is the Edgar E. Robinson Professor of United States History, emeritus, at Stanford University, will address “The Historical Construction of Racism: White Supremacy and Anti-Semitism.” Fredrickson is the past president of the Organization of American Historians.

“George has become one of the outstanding comparative historians of his generation, examining the construction of racial identity in South Africa and the American South in several major works,” said Don Doyle, the Nelson Tyrone Jr. Professor of History.

Fredrickson said that he will base his lecture on his most recent book, Racism: A Short History, which compares the evolution since the late Middle Ages of the two most influential forms of Western racism – that directed against Africans and people of African descent and racism that characterizes Jews as innately malevolent. “I note the similarities between these two historical constructions that make the term racism appropriate in both cases, but also the differences, which I attempt to explain with reference to economic, social and political developments of the United States and Europe.”

Fredrickson's books include Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa and White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History.

Since 1984 Fredrickson has taught at Stanford, where his courses have included “Nineteenth Century America,” “Race and Ethnicity in the American Experience,” and “Abraham Lincoln: Myth and Reality.”

The lecture is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception.

Posted 2/12/03 at 10 a.m.