Visiting Fellow Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University. She writes about authoritarianism, propaganda, and democracy protection. She is the recipient of Guggenheim and other fellowships and appears frequently on MSNBC She publishes Lucid, a Substack newsletter on threats to democracy in the U.S. and abroad.  

Her latest book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present examines how authoritarian leaders use corruption, violence, propaganda, and machismo to stay in power, and how resistance to them has unfolded over a century. She is also a consultant for television and film productions, including the Academy Award-winning 2022 movie Pinocchio (Guillermo del Toro, 2022), and the Netflix docuseries Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial (Joe Berlinguer, 2024). 

She testified to the House Jan. 6 Committee and advises civil society organizations, including churches and multinational corporations, that face autocratic interferences in the US and around the world. As an advisor to Protect Democracy, she was part of a 2019 Amicus Curiae brief in the context of PEN America’s lawsuit against the Trump administration’s attempts to stifle press freedoms. And in January 2024 she co-authored an amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court on the January 6 insurrection seen through the lens of the history of international anti-democratic violence.