The Hoover Institution Applied History Working Group (HAHWG), chaired by Milbank Family Senior Fellow Niall Ferguson, and vice-chaired by Hoover Fellow Joseph Ledford, will host its annual History Symposium on February 11, 2025.
The 2025 History Symposium has the theme of “Anti-Semitism: Past and Present.” World-renowned historians will review recent developments in the historiography of this subject and to relate them to contemporary aspects of anti-Semitism, not least those exposed by the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel and their aftermath.
The Symposium will feature a series of papers and panels focused on both new historical research and contemporary developments. Presenters include Mark Brilliant (University of California, Berkeley), Rosa Freedman (University of Reading), Jeffrey Herf (University of Maryland, College Park), Ethan Katz (University of California, Berkeley), Jonathan Karp (Binghamton University), Rebecca Kobrin (Columbia University), Olga Litvack (Cornell University), Daniel Sargent (University of California, Berkeley), Jeffrey Veidlinger (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), and Steven Zipperstein (Stanford University).
In addition, the Symposium will hold a special session featuring Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism and University Distinguished Professor at Emory University, in conversation with Niall Ferguson.
Participation is by invitation only. For further information, contact jledford@stanford.edu
The HAHWG has held three successful one-day symposiums in recent years. On September 16, 2022, the first History Symposium on the theme of “The History of History” took place, where historians and scholars in related fields examined the state of historical discipline at colleges and universities across America. The following September, the second History Symposium on the theme of “The History of Monetary and Financial Innovation” assembled the world’s best economic historians to explore monetary and financial innovation patterns. On May 14, 2024, the third History Symposium on the theme of “Cold Wars” transpired, during which Cold War scholars examined the superpower conflict between the United States and Soviet Union, contrasting it with the current China-US antagonism and other historical examples of rivalries that resembled cold wars.
