Prof. David S. Frey, Ph.D.

Dr. David Frey is Professor of History and Founding Director of the Stewart and Lynda Resnick Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies (RCHGS) at the US Military Academy at West Point, where he has taught since 2004. As RCHGS Director, Dr. Frey oversees a comprehensive atrocity studies program and has spearheaded efforts to increase Defense Department understanding of, research into, and efforts to prevent mass atrocity. He has appeared on 60 Minutes and testified in the Senate. In 2018, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum honored him as one of eight international agents of change and in 2023 the Museum named the Resnick Center and other global partners winners of its prestigious Elie Wiesel Award.

Dr. Frey is the author of Jews, Nazis, and the Cinema of Hungary: The Tragedy of Success, 1929-44 (IB Tauris, 2017), which won the 2019 biennial Hungarian Studies Association Book Award, co-author of Least-Worst Decisions: The Leadership of LTG Roméo Dallaire during the Rwandan Genocide (forthcoming), and co-author of Ordinary Soldiers: A Study in Law, Ethics and Leadership (USHMM, 2014). He has written or co-written more than a score of articles, chapters, and reports on Hungarian film, the Holocaust, German history, genocide, leadership, espionage, extremism, and pedagogy. His current research primarily focuses on Jewish refugees who joined the US Army military intelligence during World War II and contributed to reshaping concepts of American citizenship and belonging. This work led to appearances on 60 Minutes and was the focus of his 2021-22 William J. Lowenberg Memorial Fellow on America, the Holocaust, and the Jews fellowship at the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, US Holocaust Memorial Museum. He is currently a member of a large multi-university project on radical narratives and mis/disinformation and he directs multiple multidisciplinary, mass-atrocity related research projects. He has received individual grants and fellowships from the Defense Advanced Research and Projects Agency (DARPA), Fulbright, the Lantos Foundation, the Lucius Littauer Foundation, Fulbright-Hays, the German Academic Exchange, the Mellon Foundation, the Harriman Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Dr. Frey taught at Columbia University after earning his Ph.D. in Central European History there in 2003. In 2020 he won West Point’s highest award for teaching and scholarship, the Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society Peter L. Zhu Scholastic Achievement Award. He teaches courses on Genocide, the Holocaust, Fascism, Modern German history, Modern Central European history, African history, the Army of the Republic, and Identity, Unity and Conflict. Dr. Frey serves on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Education Committee, the Advisory Board of the Holocaust Education Program at the National World War II Museum, and the Executive Committee of the Consortium of Higher Education Centers of Holocaust, Genocide, & Human Rights Studies.