Peter Novick

Peter Novick (July 26, 1934 – February 17, 2012) was an American historian who was Professor of History at the University of Chicago. He was best known for writing That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession and The Holocaust in American Life.

The Holocaust in American Life Jeffrey C. Alexander has examined Novick's "particularization of the Holocaust" in The Holocaust in American Life, he has contrasted his universalizing view of the Holocaust (that it can be a lesson for all peoples), versus what he perceives as Novick's inextricable connection of the genocide with nationalism and Jewish identity politics.

Novick's thesis, that the Holocaust was largely ignored in the years after World War II due to Cold War concerns that encouraged a rapprochement with West Germany and a distaste among American Jews for the claiming of victim status, has been challenged in the years since his book was published, as for example by Hasia Diner in her book We Remember With Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence After the Holocaust, 1945-1962, and in the anthology After the Holocaust: Challenging the Myth of Silence.

Career Novick founded the Jewish studies program at the University of Chicago.

Personal life Novick earned his bachelor's and doctoral degrees from Columbia University, in 1957 and 1965 respectively. He died in 2012 in Chicago of lung cancer.