She had referred to him as a Holocaust denier in her 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust.
The high profile case was dramatised in the 2016 courtroom drama Denial starring English actress Rachel Weisz as the historian.
Prof Lipstadt is a professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies at Emoyi College of Arts and Science. Her latest book, Antisemitism: Here and Now, was published in 2019
The Anti-Defamation League welcomed the appointment, with CEO and national director Jonathan A. Greenblatt warning it came at a “time of rising extremism from all sides.”
“Professor Lipstadt is a woman of courage who has fought antisemitism in the courts, confronted it on campus and spoken truth to power.
“She is a champion of facts who will call out hatred against the Jewish people regardless of the source – but also a person who aptly has noted that antisemitism might start with the Jews, but it never ends with the Jews,” he said.
The total number of antisemitic incidents reported to the ADL last year across the US dipped slightly compared to 2019 but remained high at 2,024.
The figure is the third highest recorded by the ADL since it began tracking incidents in 1979.
