About me
David W. Blight is a teacher, scholar, and public historian. At Yale University he is Sterling Professor of History and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. He is the author of many books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. From 2020 to 2024, Professor Blight led the Yale and Slavery Research Project, a campus- and community-wide effort. A major milestone for the project is the book Yale and Slavery: A History, written by Professor Blight with the Yale and Slavery Research Project and published by Yale University Press in February 2024. This narrative history is a comprehensive examination of how slavery and resistance to it have shaped Yale University and the surrounding community.