Robert Ericksen (1963)

Robert P. (Bob) Ericksen served as ASB President, ASB Vice President and class president in his three years at R.A" Long and also played varsity basketball and baseball. As a National Merit Finalist, he chose to study history at Pacific Lutheran University where he received his B.A. and SUNY at Stony Brook for his M.A. He then earned a Ph.D. in history at the London School of Economics, University of London, in 1980.  In 1985 his first book, 'Theologians under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanuel Hirsch", was published by Yale University Press. This book has influenced a new direction in German church history. The book was translated into German, Dutch and Japanese. In 2005 it became the subject of a Documentary film, "Theologians under Hitler". He has been a Professor of History at Pacific Lutheran University since 1999. He helped PLU raise endowment funding for Holocaust Studies, & sits as the Kurt Mayer Chair of Holocaust Studies. Previous teaching positions were at Willamette University, Cedar Crest College and Olympic College, with visiting professorships at Stanford University and the University of Puget Sound. He has lectured at universities throughout the United States and Canada as well as at universities in several European countries. In 2004 he delivered the Kaplan Holocaust Lectures at Cape Town University, a series of lectures that led to the book, "Complicity in the Holocaust". In 2007 he delivered the annual Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Lecture at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.   In 1986 he became a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, with regular research support in Germany since then. He was a Charles Revson Fellow at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2003. Robert was a Fellow of the Lutheran Academy of Scholars at Harvard in the summer of 20M and has received research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and from the American Council of Learned Societies. In 1987 Robert became a founding member of the editorial board of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte (Contemporary Church History), a journal published by Vandenhock & Ruprecht in Germany. He has been contracted by Cambridge University Press to finish another book, "Christians in Nazi Germany, for their highly-regarded "Short History Series." In addition he has published more than three dozen peer-reviewed articles and/or book chapters.