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Timothy Snyder

Richard C. Levin Professor of History, Yale University
Chapter Member: Connecticut SSN
Areas of Expertise:

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About Timothy

Snyder is one of the leading American historians and public intellectuals, and enjoys perhaps greater prominence in Europe, as he specializes in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, and the Holocaust. He is a member of the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, is the faculty advisor for the Fortunoff Collection of Holocaust Testimonies at Yale, and sits on the advisory councils of the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research and other organizations. 

Contributions | No Jargon Podcast | In the News | Publications

Contributions

Twenty Lessons on Fighting Tyranny from the Twentieth Century

Key Findings Brief,

No Jargon Podcast

Episode 81:
On Tyranny

In the News

Opinion: "Words To Fight the Many Faces of Tyranny," Timothy Snyder, The Los Angeles Times, October 3, 2021.
Interviewed in "80 Years After It Started, WWII Continues to Define National Identities," WBEZ 91.5 Chicago, September 4, 2019.
Opinion: "Data vs. Knowledge: Why Only the Wise Understand the Difference," Timothy Snyder, Big Think, September 18, 2018.
Interviewed in "3 Ways to Avoid the Emotional Drain of Politics Today," Big Think, July 1, 2018.
Quoted by John Schwane in "Grammar for Gun-Rights Enthusiasts," Tulsa World, May 9, 2018.
Interviewed in "Historian Timothy Snyder on Trump’s War on Democracy: He is Deliberately “Hurting White People”," Salon, May 9, 2018.
Research discussed by Tim Adams, in "The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder Review – Chilling and Unignorable," The Guardian, April 15, 2018.
Research discussed by Rohit Kumar, in "A Handbook for Citizens in Democracies – and a Warning for India," The Wire, April 12, 2018.
Quoted by Max Hastings in "It is Truly Terrifying How Many People Will Swallow Putin's Lies amid Russian Denials of Complicity in the Syrian Gas Attack or the Attempted Murder of the Skripals," The Daily Mail, April 9, 2018.
Research discussed by Jonathan Kirsch, in "On a Rocky ‘Road to Unfreedom’," Jewish Journal, April 4, 2018.
Interviewed in "Are We on 'The Road to Unfreedom’? Timothy Snyder Considers This Political Moment through History's Lens," The Chicago Tribune, April 4, 2018.
Interviewed in "America is at War with Propaganda Robots — and the Bots are Winning by Breaking Us Down Psychologically," Raw Story, April 2, 2018.
Interviewed in "Democracy Down," Slate, March 29, 2018.
Research discussed by Edward Lucas, in "Review: The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America by Timothy Snyder — Why the West is Losing to Putin," The Times, March 24, 2018.
Interviewed in "Timothy Snyder: Trump May Use Russian Interference as a Pretext for Canceling Elections," Salon TV, February 23, 2018.
Guest on 94.1 KPFA, February 22, 2018.
Quoted by Marc Santora in "Poland’s ‘Death Camp’ Law Tears at Shared Bonds of Suffering with Jews," New York Times, February 6, 2018.
Quoted by David Hogberg in "What Good is Democracy if the Result is Trump?," The American Spectator, January 29, 2018.
Quoted by Molly Ball in "'America no longer matters.' Davos isn't Worried about President Trump," TIME, January 25, 2018.
Research discussed by Madeline Will, in "In Today's Political Climate, It's Hard to Teach Civics, Some Teachers Say," Teaching Now, January 16, 2018.
Research discussed by Susan Orniston, in "Beware Creeping US Authoritarianism, Yale's Timothy Snyder Warns," CBC News: The National, January 7, 2018.
Opinion: "Authoritarianism is Making a Comeback. Here's the Time-Tested Way to Defeat It," Timothy Snyder (with Maria J. Stephan), The Guardian, June 20, 2017.
Research discussed by Jingnan Peng, in "'On Tyranny' Suggests Many Simple Actions Can Foster Civil Society," Christian Science Monitor, May 22, 2017.
Research discussed by Stav Ziv, in "Inside One Historian's Quest to Prevent Tyranny in America," Newsweek, April 20, 2017.
Opinion: "20 Lessons from the 20th Century on How to Survive in Trump’s America," Timothy Snyder, In These Times, November 21, 2016.
Opinion: "What You - Yes, You - Can Do to Save America from Tyranny," Timothy Snyder, Dallas Morning News, November 21, 2016.

Publications

"Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin" (Basic Books, 2012).

Presents the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. 

"On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century" (Penguin Random House, 2017).

Argues that the political order of today faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century.  Explains that we are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism, but that our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.