Rate My Professor Sheldon Harris

Sheldon H. Harris was Professor Emeritus of History at California State University, Northridge. He earned an A.B. cum laude from Brooklyn College in 1949, an A.M. from Harvard University in 1950, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1958, with his dissertation on John Louis O’Sullivan, the editor associated with the phrase “Manifest Destiny.”

Harris's career began as an instructor in history at Brooklyn College (1957–1958) and associate professor of social science at Bradford Durfee College of Technology (1958–1963). He joined California State University, Northridge in 1963 as assistant professor, served as visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1966, advanced to associate professor at CSUN (1966–1969), and held the position of professor of history from 1969 until his retirement in 1991. Early work focused on U.S. labor history, but following research trips to China in the early 1980s, he specialized in Japanese biological warfare during World War II. His seminal book, Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932–45 and the American Cover-Up (1994, revised 2002), utilized archival materials, survivor testimonies, and Freedom of Information Act documents to expose Unit 731 experiments that killed 10,000 to 12,000 people in laboratories with pathogens like anthrax, plague, typhoid, and cholera, plus over 250,000 civilian deaths from field tests, and the subsequent U.S. immunity deals with Japanese scientists. Other publications include Paul Cuffe: Black America and the African Return (1972), Prohibition, Nine Years of Excitement (1973), Blues Who's Who: A Biographical Dictionary of Blues Singers (1979), and I Remember: Eighty Years of Black Entertainment, Big Bands, and the Blues (1986). Harris received CSUN's Honored Faculty Award in 1994, developed the innovative course “Hollywood in U.S. History” featuring Mel Brooks, served on key university committees, and presented at international conferences such as one in Shanghai on Japanese atrocities. His scholarship influenced activist networks, reparations efforts, and a 2002 Japanese court ruling acknowledging the program.