Seymour Drescher

Seymour Drescher is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Departments of History and Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. He earned a BA in History from City College of New York in 1955 and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1960. Drescher began his teaching career as an Instructor in History at Harvard University from 1960 to 1962. In 1962, he joined the University of Pittsburgh as Assistant Professor of History, advancing to Associate Professor in 1965, Professor in 1969, and Distinguished University Professor in 1986. He received a joint appointment as Professor of Sociology in 1972, served as Chair of the Department of History from 1980 to 1983, and held positions such as Academic Dean for Semester-at-Sea in 1998 and 2002. Drescher also served as Visiting Distinguished Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center in 1986, 1987, and 1988, and as Secretary of the European Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in 1984-1985.

Drescher's research interests focus on Alexis de Tocqueville and slavery and abolition in global perspective. His major publications include Dilemmas of Democracy: Tocqueville and Modernization (1968), Tocqueville and England, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (1977, revised 1986 and 2010), Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Perspective (1987), From Slavery to Freedom: Comparative Studies in the Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery (1999), The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation (2002), which received the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (2009), and as co-editor, The Meaning of Freedom: Economics, Politics, and Culture after Slavery (1992) and Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4: AD 1804 to Present (2017). He produced the film Confrontation: Paris 1968 with Eugene McCreary in 1970. Elected a Foreign Member of Academia Europaea in 2009, Drescher has made enduring contributions to the study of antislavery movements, free labor ideologies, and the global history of slavery.

Professional Email: syd@pitt.edu