Gunther Peck

Gunther Peck is a Professor of History and a Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, where he also serves as Bass Fellow since 2011. He earned his B.A. from Princeton University in 1984, M.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1989, M.A. from Yale University in 1991, and Ph.D. from Yale University in 1994. Previously an Associate Professor of History and Public Policy, he was promoted to full professor in both fields in 2025. Peck directs the Hart Leadership Program at Duke's Sanford School and is the founder and co-director of the Student Voting Rights Lab. He engages in community activism in North Carolina focused on voting rights and citizen voting behavior. As a recipient of the Bass Fellowship for excellence in teaching and scholarship, Peck has been recognized for connecting historical inquiry to contemporary ethical dilemmas and inspiring students to become transformative leaders. He served as Peck Visiting Associate Professor at Yale University from 2017 to 2018.

Peck's research centers on the long history of human trafficking and its intersections with the evolution of racial ideology, humanitarian intervention, immigration policy, and whiteness in North America and Europe. His scholarship examines how narratives of white victimhood and white slavery have shaped racist ideologies and political discourse. Key publications include the book Reinventing Free Labor: Padrones and Immigrant Workers in the North American West, 1880-1930 (2000), which has garnered over 330 citations, and Race Traffic: Antislavery and the Origins of White Victimhood (2024), published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press. This work traces the historical fantasies of white slavery from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, revealing how laboring individuals leveraged whiteness for economic and political advantage. Other notable works are "Labor abolition and the politics of white victimhood: Rethinking the history of working-class racism" (Journal of the Early Republic, 2019), "The shadow of white slavery: Race, innocence, and history in contemporary anti-human trafficking campaigns" (2016), and "Counting Modern Slaves: Historicizing the Emancipatory Work of Numbers" (2021). Peck's publications have been cited over 665 times according to Google Scholar. He mentors graduate students in History and Public Policy and teaches undergraduate courses such as “Immigrant Dreams, American Realities: U.S. Immigration Policy History,” “Historicizing Whiteness,” “Human Trafficking, Past to Present,” and “North American Environmental History.”

Professional Email: peckgw@duke.edu