Alan M. Kraut

Alan M. Kraut is a professor of history at American University and a non-resident fellow of the Migration Policy Institute. Specializing in immigration and ethnic history and the history of medicine in the United States, he is the author or editor of nine books and many scholarly articles. Volumes include The Huddled Masses, the Immigrant in American Society, 1880-1921 (1982; 2nd ed. 2001); Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes and the “Immigrant Menace.” (1994); and Goldberger’s War: The life and Work of a Public Health Crusader (2003).

A study of U.S. Public Health Service physician Dr. Joseph Godberger’s investigation of pellagra in the early twentieth century South. Silent Travelers won the Theodore Saloutos Prize (Immigration and Ethnic History Society). Goldberger’s War received the Henry Adams Prize (Society for History in the Federal Government) and the Arthur Viseltear Prize (American Public Health Association). In 2007 he and his wife, Deborah, co-authored Covenant of Care: Newark Beth Israel and the Jewish Hospital in American.

In 2013 he published Ethnic Historians and the Mainstream: Shaping America’s Immigration Story (co-edited). He is currently writing a history of xenophobia and nativism throughout American history. Kraut’s research has been supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Institutes of Health. He is a past Present of the Organization of American Historians and is the current President of the National Coalition for History. He is an elected fellow of the prestigious Society of American Historians. In 2017 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Immigration and Ethnic History Society.