Timothy Snyder

Richard C. Levin Professor of History and Professor of Global Affairs

Tim Snyder, BA, Brown University; PhD, University of Oxford; faculty member at Yale since 2001 and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna: You are a scholar of European history whose historical work concerns central Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust; an acclaimed author of prize-winning books; a distinguished public intellectual; and a passionate defender of democracy who has been called “the leading interpreter of our dark times.”

If your fifteen books and scores of articles for major newspapers and magazines have a central theme, it is the fragility of our democracy, the role of the individual in resisting oppression, and the dangers of authoritarianism, particularly as seen through the lens of twentieth-century European history.

In your major works—such as Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, exploring what Americans often think of as the “Good War,” which resulted in mass killings throughout Europe and the Soviet Union; Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, concerning the atrocities of the Holocaust and the lessons we have failed to learn from its tragic history; and On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, described as “a call to arms and a guide to resistance,” which draws on historical examples to provide lessons for resisting authoritarianism in contemporary life—you make a case for actively defending the values and principles of democracy in the face of modern threats to its existence.

In a different key, your unforgettable book Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary, which delves into your own illness and near-death experience, is a searing reflection on an American healthcare system driven by profits. Once again, as in all your work, you invest all citizens with responsibility for systemic failure, pointing out that those of us who are doing better are harming those who are less well-off and suggesting that complacency undermines the well-being and freedom of everyone.

Your work has received stunning accolades: terms such as “magisterial,” “gripping and disturbingly vivid,” “assiduously researched,” and “utterly definitive” run through reviews and critical assessments. But perhaps the most essential of these accolades is the word “humane.” The excellence of your work has earned you many prizes: the literature award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Hannah Arendt Prize, and the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding, among others.

At Yale for nearly a quarter-century, you and your wife, Professor of History Marci Shore— whose work on Eastern Europe and intellectual history also calls attention to the fragility of democracy—have been deeply embedded in our community. You are both galvanizing teachers, whose classes have awakened scores of Yale undergraduates to a better understanding of Eastern Europe, the global challenges to democracy, and their responsibility to face these in the future. Your moving farewell in the Yale Daily News paid tribute to your years here and to those colleagues who helped welcome you at a formative moment, who shared your intellectual interests, and who were an influential part of your development.

We are glad and lucky that you will retain an active relationship with Yale through the Blue Visiting Professorship at the Jackson School of Global Affairs, but there will always be more to your connection with Yale than the bond of this title. You have said, “There is a sense in which I cannot leave, because Yale remains within me.” You certainly remain within Yale as well, Tim Snyder, and as you and Marci leave, a large part of you will remain here. Your colleagues, students, and friends thank you for your legacy and the urgent work you will continue.