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School of Arts and SciencesPitt HomeContact Us

Seymour Drescher

University of Pittsburgh
Department of History
3707 Posvar Hall
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
(412) 648-7474
(412) 648-9074 (fax)
syd@pitt.edu (e-mail)

Education

Bronx High School of Science, 1951

City College of New York, B.A. 1955

University of Wisconsin, M.S. 1956

Fulbright Scholar (Paris) 1957-1958

University of Wisconsin, Ph.D. 1960

Professional Organizations

American Historical Association

Society for French Historical Studies

North American Conference on British Studies

Fulbright Association

The Historical Society

Positions

University Professor of History and Sociology, University of Pittsburgh, 1986-

Chair, Department of History, 1980-1983

Academic Dean, Semester-at-Sea, University of Pittsburgh , 1998, 2002

Visiting Distinguished Professor, CUNY Graduate Center 1986, 1987, 1988

Secretary, European Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center, 1984-85

Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh, 1969-1986

Visiting Professor, 1973, Carnegie-Mellon University  

Professor of Sociology (Joint Appointment Pittsburgh), 1972-

Associate Professor of History, Pittsburgh , 1965-1969

Assistant Professor of History, Pittsburgh , 1962-1965

Instructor in History, Harvard University, 1960-1962

General References 

Robert W. Fogel, Director, Center for Population Economics, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago

Stanley Engerman, John H. Munro Professor of Economics and Professor of History, University of Rochester

David Brion Davis, Sterling Professor Emeritus, Yale University, School of English and American Studies, New Haven, Connecticut

David Eltis, Professor of History, Emory University , Atlanta, GA Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Film

Confrontation: Paris 1968. Co-produced with Eugene McCreary and released for public screening in 1971. Presented for discussion at: American Historical Association (1970); University of Wisconsin (1971); American Historical Association (Western) (1972); American Educational Research Association (1973); Warwick University, England (1973); Kings College, London (1974); French Historical Studies, Berkeley (1977); Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1984); CUNY Graduate Center (1987); University of Kentucky (1988); Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio (1990); Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio (1990); Cover Photo for Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement (1994).

Books and Essays

"America and French Romanticism during the July Monarchy," American Quarterly 11:3-20 (Spring 1959).

Tocqueville and England, Harvard University Press, 1964.

"Tocqueville's Two Democracies," Journal of the History of Ideas 25:201-216 (April-June 1964)

ed., Tocqueville and Beaumont on Social Reform, Harper and Row, 1968.

(with Lynn Marshall), "American Historians and Tocqueville's Democracy," Journal of American History 55:512-532 (December 1968).

Dilemmas of Democracy: Tocqueville and Modernization, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1968; Japanese edition, Charles Tuttle, Tokyo, 1970.

"Tocqueville," Encyclopedia Britannica (1974 ed.) 18:468-471.

"Le 'Declin' du systeme esclavagiste britannique et l'abolition de#la traite," Annales: Economies, Societes, Civilisations 31:414-435 (mars-avril 1976).

"Capitalism and Abolition: Values and Forces in Britain 1783-1814," in Liverpool, the Slave Trade, and Abolition, ed. R. T. Anstey and P.E.H. Hair, The Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (Occasional Series, volume 2), 1976.

"Capitalism and the Decline of Slavery: The British Case in Comparative Perspective," in Comparative Perspectives on Slavery in New World Plantation Societies: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, volume 292, 1977, 132-142.

Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977.

"Two Variants of Anti-Slavery: Religious Organization and Social Mobilization in Britain and France 1780-1870," in C. Bolt and S. Drescher eds., Anti-Slavery, Religion and Reform: Essays in Memory of Roger Anstey, Folkestone , England , 1980, 44-63.

ed. with Christine Bolt, Anti-Slavery, Religion and Reform, Dawson/Archon, 1980.

"Alexis de Tocqueville, homme politique: a comment," in Michael Hereth and Jutta Hoffken (eds.), Alexis de Tocqueville-Zur Politik in der Demokratie: Symposion Zum 175. Geburtstag von Alexis de Tocqueville Baden-Baden, 1981).

"Cart Whip and Billy Roller: Anti-Slavery and Reform Symbolism in Industrializing Britain," Journal of Social History, 15:1-24 (September 1981).

"Public Opinion and the Destruction of British Colonial Slavery,"in Slavery and British 1776-1846, ed., J. Walvin, Macmillan, London, 1982, 22-48.

with D. Sabean and A. Sharlin, "George Mosse and Political Symbolism," in Political Symbolism in Modern Europe, Transaction 1982, 1-15.   

ed. with D. Sabean and A. Sharlin, Political Symbolism in Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of George L. Mosse Transaction, New Brunswick and London, 1982.

Tocqueville's "Memoir on Pauperism", The Public Interest 70 (Winter, 1983) pp. 102-120, reprinted from Tocqueville and Beaumont on Social Reform, pp. 1-27, by IEA Health and Welfare Unit, (London, 1997); Ivan R. Dee (Chicago, 1997).

"Econocide, Capitalism and Slavery." "Commentary on `Econocide-Myth or Reality,'" in the Boletin de Estudios Latino-Americanos y del Caribe" no. 36 (June, 1984), pp. 49-66.

"Note on `Market Structure and the Profits of the British African Slave Trade in the late Eighteenth Century,'" Journal of Economic History, 45:3 (Sept. 1985), 704.

"The Historical Context of British Abolition", in David Richardson (ed.) Abolition and its Aftermath in the West Indies , vol. I, The Historical Context, 1790-1870, Frank Cass, London, 1985, 3-24.

"The `Decline Thesis' of British Slavery Since Econocide" in Slavery and Abolition 7:1 (May, 1986), 3-24; same, in Caribbean Slavery in the Atlantic World, Verene Shepherd and Hilary Beckles eds. (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2000), 1055-1069.

Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Perspective Macmillan, London/Oxford University Press, N.Y., 1986.

"Paradigms Tossed: Capitalism and the Political Sources of Abolition", in British Capitalism and British Slavery, ed. S. Engerman and B. Solow, Cambridge University Press, 1987, 191-208.

"Tocqueville and The French Revolution," in The World and I (September 1987), 645-661.

"Eric Williams: British Capitalism and British Slavery," in History and Theory 26:2 (May, 1987), 181-196.

"Eric Williams," in The Blackwell Dictionary of Historians, John Cannon, R.H.C. Davis, William Doyle and Jack P. Greene (eds), 1988.

"More than America:Comparison and Synthesis in Tocqueville's Democracy", in Reconsidering Tocqueville's DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, ed. A. Eisenstadt, Rutgers University Press, 1988.

"Brazilian Abolition in Comparative Perspective", in The Hispanic American Historical Review, 68:3 (August, 1988), 429-60; same, in R. Scott, S. Drescher, et al, The Abolition of Slavery and the Aftermath of Emancipation in Brazil, Durham, N.C., 1988, 23-54; in P. Finkelman ed, Comparative Issues in Slavery, 18 vols. (New York, 1989) XVIII, 69-100; trans. Jaime Rodrigues "A Abolicão Brasileira em Perspectiva Comparativa," História Social, 2 (1995), pp. 115-162.

"On James Farr's `So Vile and Miserable an Estate'" in Political Theory, 16:3 (August, 1988), 502-303.

"Slaving Capital of the World: Liverpool and National Opinion in the era of abolition" in Slavery and Abolition, 9:1 (1988), 128-143; "same, in De la traite a`l'esclavage. Tome II of Actes du Colloque International sur la traite des Noirs (Nantes: CRHMA, 1989), 281-295; and in Slave Trades 1500-1800: Globalization of Forced Labour, ed. Patrick Manning, vol. 15, of An Expanding World: The European Impact on World History 1450-1800 (Variorum, 1996), 334-349.

"Notions of Liberty and Liberalism in France and America in the Retrospectives of their Revolutions," The Valley Forge Journal, 4:3 (June, 1989), 193-201; revised as "Liberty and Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century France and America", in The State of Liberty Revisited, W.S. Dillard and N.G. Kotler (eds.) (Washington and London, 1994), pp. 17-26.

"Tocqueville Rediscovered", Humanities 10:4 (July-August 1989), 8-10/33-35.

"Digesting the Revolution: A Tocquevillian Perspective," The World and I (July, 1989), 467-487.

"Manumission in a Society without Slave Law: Eighteenth-Century England," Slavery and Abolition, 10:3 (Dec., 1989), 85-101.

"People and Parliament: The Rhetoric of the British Slave Trade", Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 20:4 (Spring, 1990), 561-580.

"The Ending of the Slave trade and the Evolution of European Scientific Racism," Social Science History 14:3 (1990), 415-450; same, in J. E. Inikori and S. L. Engerman eds., The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies and People in Africa, The Americas, and Europe (Durham, N.C. 1992), 361-396.

"Trends in der Historiographie des abolitionismus", Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 16:2 (1990), 187-211.

"British Way: French Way: Opinion Building and Revolution in the Second French Slave Emancipation," The American Historical Review, 96:3 (June, 1991), 709-734.

"Why Great Revolutions will become rare: Tocqueville's most neglected prognosis", Journal of Modern History 64 (September, 1992), 429-454.

ed., with Frank McGlynn, The Meaning of Freedom: Economics, Politics, and Culture After Slavery (Pittsburgh , 1992).

"The Role of Jews in the Transatlantic Slave Trade," Immigrants and Minorities 12:2 (July, 1993), 113-125; rept. In Strangers and Neighbors: Relations between Blacks and Jews in the United States ed. Maurianne Adams and John Bracey (Amherst: University of Massachusets Press, 1999), 105-115.

"Servile Insurrection and John Brown's Body in Europe", Journal of American History 80:2 (Sept. 1993) 499-524 (abridged version).

Review Essay, "The Antislavery Debate", History and Theory (Oct. 1993),311-29; same, in Caribbean Slavery in the Atlantic World, Verene Shepherd and Hilary Beckles eds. (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2000), 1042-1055.

"Alexis de Tocqueville", in European Historical Biography (Washington, 1993), pp. 4752-4762.

"The Long Good-Bye: Dutch Capitalism and Antislavery in Comparative Perspective", American Historical Review 99:1, (1994), 44-69; revised in Fifty Years Later: Capitalism, Modernity and Antislavery in the Dutch Orbit, Gert Oostinie, ed (KITLV, Leiden/University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996), pp. 25-66, with an "Afterword" in The Lesser Antilles in the Age of European Expansion, Robert L. Paquette and Stanley L. Engerman, eds. (Gainesville, FL, 1996), pp. 345-367.

"Whose Abolition? Popular Pressure and the Ending of the British Slave Trade", Past and Present, 143 (May 1994), pp. 136-166.

"Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: Tocqueville and the Franco-American Exchange," in The French-American Connection: 200 Years of Cultural and Intellectual Interaction, Lloyd Kramer, ed. (Chapel Hill NC, 1994), pp. 24-33.

"Servile Insurrection and John Brown's Body in Europe", in His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to the John Brown Raid; Paul Finkelman, ed. (Charlottesville, VA 1995), 253-295.

With David Brion Davis, "Statement on the Jews and the Atlantic Slave Trade," Perspectives (of the American Historical Association - March 1995), p. 27.

"Slavery and the British Economy" New York Review of Books (April 6, 1995), 49.

"Reflections," epilogue of Fifty Years Later: Capitalism, Modernity and Antislavery in the Dutch Orbit, Gert Oostindie, ed (KITLV, Leiden/University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996), pp. 243-261.

"Abolitionism", The Encyclopedia of Democracy, Seymour Martin Lipset, ed-in chief, 4 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Books, 1996.)

"Esclavage et réflexion morale au sujet de l'esclavage," in Dictionnaire d'Ethique et de Philosophie Morale, Monique Canto-Sperber ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996), 518-524; 4th edition 2005.

"The Atlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust: A Comparative Analysis," in Is the Holocaust Unique?: Perspectives on Comparative Genocide, Alan S. Rosenbaum ed. (Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1996), pp. 65-85; rept. 2001.

"Capitalism and Slavery after Fifty Years," Slavery and Abolition, 18(3) (December, 1997), 212-227; rpt in Capitalism and Slavery: Fifty Years Later ed Selwyn H. H. Carrington (New York: P. Lang, 2000), 81-97.

Foreword to Tocqueville and the French, by Françoise Mélonio (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1998), vii - xv.

Co-editor, with Stanley L. Engerman, A Historical Guide to World Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

"Free labor vs. Slave labor: The British and Caribbean Cases," in Terms of Labor: Slavery, Serfdom and Free Labor, Stanley L. Engerman ed (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 50-86, 285- 293.

From Slavery To Freedom: Comparative Studies in the Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery (London: Macmillian/New York: NYU Press, 1999).

"De Slavernij en de drang tot herdenking in de Verenigde Staten," in Het verleden onder ogen: Herdenking van de slavernij, Gert Oostindie, ed. (The Hague: Prins Claus Fonds, 1999), pp. 195-200. English version: "Commemorating Slavery and Abolition in the United States of America," Facing up to the Past: Perspectives on the Commemoration of Slavery from Africa, the Americas and Europe, Gert Oostindie, ed. (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2001), pp. 109-112.

"Slavery as Genocide," in Encylcopedia of Genocide, Israel W. Charney, ed., 2 vols (Santa Barbara, CA,1999), pp. 517-18.

"Abolitionist Expectations: Britain," in After Slavery: Emancipation and its Discontents, Howard Temperley ed. (London: Frank Cass, 2000), pp. 41-66.

Co-editor, with Stanley Engerman and Robert Paquette, Slavery (Oxford Readers Series) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)

"L'Amerique vue par les tocquevilliens,"Raisons politiques, special issue, Le Moment Tocqueville, I(1) (February 2001), 63076.  

"Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic Slave Trade," in The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450 to 1800, eds. Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), 439-470.

"The Limits of Example," in The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, ed. David P. Geggus (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 10-14.

The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2002. *Awarded the Frederick Douglass Prize for 2003 by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition.

"New Directions in Masonic and Atlantic History: An Afterword," in Freemasonry on Both Sides of the Atlantic, William Weisberger, ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 937-939.

"Tocqueville's New Democracy," French Politics Culture & Society 21:1 (Spring 2003), 106-109.

"Who Needs Ancienneté: Tocqueville and Aristocracy and Modernity," History of Political Thought, 24 (4) (Winter, 2003), 624-646.

"White Atlantic? The Choice for African Slave Labor in the Plantation Americas," in Slavery in the Development of the Americas, D. Eltis, F.D. Lewis and K. Sokoloff, eds, (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 31-69.

"The Fragmentation of Atlantic Slavery and the British Intercolonial Slave Trade", in The Chattel Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas, Walter Johnson ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 234-255.

"Tocqueville’s Comparative Perspectives", in The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville, ed. Cheryl B. Welch (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

"Women’s Mobilization in the Era of Slave Emancipation", in Women’s Rights and Transatlantic Antislavery in the Ear of Emancipation, K. Sklar and J. Steward, eds. (New Haven: Yale University Press; forthcoming 2006). 

Lectures and Presentations

University of Indiana, 1969; University of Wisconsin, University of Kent, 1973; University of Edinburgh, 1974; University of Liverpool, 1974; University of Warwick, 1974; University of Canterbury, 1977; University of East Anglia, 1978; University of London, 1978; Bellagio Conference Center, 1978; University of Arizona, 1979; Theodore Heuss Akademie, Gummersbach, Germany, 1980; Harvard University 1980; Hamilton College, 1981; Hobart and William Smith College, 1981; University of Wisconsin, 1982; University of Hull, 1983; Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, 1984; University of Kent, 1984; Bellagio Conference Center, 1984; University of Warwick, 1984; University of Nantes, 1985; CUNY, 1985; Wesleyan University, 1985; Cooper Hewett Museum, 1985; Woodrow Wilson Center, 1986; University of Illinois (Urbana) 1987; Pittsburgh Center for Social History, 1987; Zagreb, Yugoslavia, 1988; American Historical Association, 1988. Symposium on the Effects of the French Revolution, Slippery Rock University, University Park, Penn State University, 1989; NEH-CUNY Institute on the French Revolution, CUNY/New York 1989. Rotary International, 1989; Allegheny College 1989; Hampden-Sydney College, 1989, Butler Community College, 1990 Duquesne University 1991; "British Abolition and American Emancipation," The Wilson Center Radio cassette dialogue (with Ira Berlin), The Wilson Center, 1984. "Slavery and Abolition" two hour interview edited by historian Christopher Moore, CBC Radio, Toronto, 1989. Participation at conferences of the American Educational Research Association, American Historical Association, French Historical Studies Association, Duquesne History Forum, Organization of American Historians; Bicentennial Conference on Comparative Slavery in Plantation Societies; Liverpool conference on the Slave Trade; Bellagio Conference on Religion, Antislavery and Reform; Internationales Symposion Zum 175 Geburstag von Alexis de Tocqueville; Sesquicentennial symposium on Tocqueville's Mosse, Journey; Festschrift Conference in Honor of George L. Mosse, University of Wisconsin. Sesquicentennial of the Abolition of British Slavery; Bellagio conference on British Capitalism and Slavery; International Conference on the Slave Trade; Sesquicentennial of Tocqueville's Democracy in America; Centennial of the Statue of Liberty, Cooper-Hewett Museum; Conference on the Concept of Liberty in America and France, Washington and Paris; Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, International Conference on Emancipation, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Negritude e Identidade nas Americas, Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Campus Mariana, Minas Gerais; Histories of Freedom: Citizens and Slaves in the Modern World, Universidade Estaduale de Campinas, Sao Paulo; Liberty of Expression, Wilson Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C.; 12th International Congress of Anthropology andEthnological Sciences, Zagreb, Yugoslavia; The Meaning of Freedom, University of Pittsburgh; The Atlantic Slave Trade, University of Rochester; UNESCO Conference on Slavery Emancipation and the Shaping of Caribbean Society, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago; The Conference on Latin American History, AHA, Cincinnati; International Conference on the History of French Revolution, Georgetown University, Washington D.C. National Endowment for the Humanities Institute on the French Revolution City University of New York, French Revolution Bicentennial Commemorations; International conference on Tocqueville's Democracy in America of 1840, Yale University; The Intellectual Revolt against Liberal Democracy 1870-1945, Israel Academy of Science, Jerusalem. French Historical Studies Association, Vancouver, British Columbia; Caribbean Studies Seminar, Institute for Commonwealth Studies, London; By Sea and by Air: Five Centuries of Interaction Between the Low Countries and the Americas, 1492-1992, University of Leiden, The Netherlands The Lesser Antilles in the Age of European Expansion: Hamilton College, Clinton NY.; University of Essex; Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology (KITLV) Dutch Capitalism, slavery and antislavery. Institut Français de Washington Conference on "The French-American Connection," at Chapel Hill , N.C. Conference on Capitalism and Slavery: Fifty Years Later, at University of the West Indies, Trinidad; Conference on the Terms of Labor, at Washington University, St. Louis. Western Jewish Studies Association, University of Arizona, Tucson; The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West: 1450 to the Revolutions for Independence in the Americas, John Carter Brown Library. Seminar in Atlantic Studies, "After Slavery: Emancipation and its Discontents," University of East Anglia, Norwich. Tocqueville in Context, sponsored by Harvard Program on Constitutional Government and the Herbst Program of Humanities, Boulder, Colorado, Bard College; Haitian Revolution in Atlantic Context, Charleston, SC; Institute For Commonwealth Studies, London; Internal Slave Trades in the Americas, 1808-1888, Gerder Lehrman Institute, Yale University. "Eric E. Williams and the Pan Africanist Moment," Wellesley College; Manumission in the Atlantic World, Charleston, SC; Slavery and Genocide, Conference, Gerder Lehrman Institute, Yale University; Conference on Factor Endowments, Labor and Economic Growth in the Americas, University of Rochester; "The Mansfield/Winthrop translation of Democracy in America," American Political Science Association; "Loss of Freedom - Then and Now," University of Rochester; Sisterhood and Slavery Conference, Gilder Lehrman Center, Yale University; "Race, Freedom and Bondage Conference, Yale University; The Historical Society, plenary session on "White Atlantic?"; "Reference Publishing and the Historian," AHA annual meeting. Liberty Fund Colloquia on Tocqueville’s Old Regime (2003), Taine’s French Revolution (2004), and the “Liberty Test in Tocqueville’s Old Regime” (forthcoming 2005), Two Colloquia on the Bicentennial of the Haitian Revolution, at the University of Pittsburgh and Brown University (2004); an international conference on “Where is Europe” at the University of Pittsburgh (2004); a colloquium on French Abolitionism at the University of Bretagne-Sud (2004); a conference in commemoration of the bicentennial of the birth of Alexis de Tocqueville in Normandy and Yale (2005). Lecturer, Embry-Riddle Distinguished Speakers Series (2006); Elsa V. Goveia Memorial Lecture, University of the West Indies, Barbados (2006).

Academic Honors, Postions, and Awards

Meade Prize in History (C.C.N.Y.) 1955; Fulbright Scholar, 1957-1958; American Philosophical Society, 1965, 1975, 1985, 1987; Social Science Research Council, 1968; Pittsburgh University Center for International Studies (Grant-in-aid for film), 1969-1970; National Endowment for the Humanities, Senior Fellowship, 1973-1974; American Council of Learned Societies (Grants-in-aid), 1976, 1984; American Council of Learned Societies, Fellowship (unused), 1977-1978; John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 1977-1978; Vice President, Society of French Historical Studies, 1978-1979; Various awards by the University of Pittsburgh Faculty; Research Funds and International Room Travel Grants, 1963-1980; Residency at the Bellagio Study Center, Rockefeller Foundation, 1980; Huntington Library Fellowship, 1982, 1983; National Endowment for the Humanities, grant for quantification of British Parliamentary Petitions, 1982-1984; Keynote Lecturer: Sesquicentennial of British Slave Emancipation 1983; Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow, 1983-84; Roger T. Anstey Memorial Lecturer, 1984; Controle-reader of Tome III (Oeuvres Politiques), vol. 2 and 3, of the definitive edition of the Oeuvres of Tocqueville, Paris, Gallimard 1985-1990; Wesleyan University Lecturer: Reviewing the Canon in Afro-American Studies series 1985; Advisory Committee, Olin Seminar national Center for the, Humanities 1986-1989; Board of Editors, Slavery and Abolition 1985-; George A. Miller Lecturer, University of Illinois, 1987; Capitalism and Antislavery selected by Choice: Outstanding Academic Books (1988); Nominated for the executive Council of the American Historical Association, 1988; Lecturer, Commonwealth Speakers Program, 1989, 1991; Advisor to Woodrow Wilson Center Fellowship Committee, 1989-; Residency at Bellagio Study Center 1990; University of Pittsburgh Distinguished Research Award, 1991; Advisor, NEH Media Grants Committee, 1991; UCIS Senior Research Fellowship 1993, 2000, University of Pittsburgh; Listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the World; Editor, Journal of Contemporary History, 1992-1999; Member, Herbert Baxter Adams book prize committee, 1993-1996; Convocation Address, University of Pittsburgh at Titusville, September 1993. Commission nationale for the publication of the writings of Tocqueville, 1994-; member, Koninklijk Instituut voor Tal-, Land-en Volkenkunde, 1993-; member Alexis de Tocqueville Advisory Committee (CSPAN), 1995-1998; Black Liberty Project, 1998-2000; History Society, book prize committee, 2001; Gilder Lehrman Center, annual book award committee, 2002; Guest scholar at the University of Bretagne-Sud, May-June 2003., The Mighty Experiment recipient of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize (first prize) by Yale's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery and Abolition (2003).