David Hollinger

David Hollinger
Born	(1941-04-25) April 25, 1941 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Academic background
Alma mater	University of La Verne, University of California, Berkeley
Academic work
Discipline	History
Sub-discipline	Intellectual history
Institutions	Organization of American Historians, University of California, Berkeley

David Albert Hollinger (/hɑːliŋər/) (born April 25, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois) is the Preston Hotchkis Professor of History, emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. His specialties are American intellectual history and American ethnoracial history.

Hollinger is the author of several books, including Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (1995), Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America (2017), and Christianity’s American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular (2022).

His influence in the field of religious history was discussed in 2013 in The New York Times.

Life

Hollinger grew up in the Church of the Brethren, a denomination in which his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had been ministers, but Hollinger has identified himself as an atheist for most of his adult life. His family memoir, When This Mask of Flesh is Broken: The Story of an American Protestant Family (2017) is an account of the Hollinger family’s history and its role in the Brethren community.

Hollinger earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from La Verne College in 1963, and then his Master of Arts degree in 1965 and Ph.D. in 1970, both from University of California, Berkeley. Before joining the Berkeley faculty in 1992, Hollinger taught at the University at Buffalo and the University of Michigan. He was Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University in 2001-2. He retired at Berkeley in 2013.

Hollinger has been the Ph.D. advisor to people who have become well established as publishing scholars in history, including S. M. Amadae, Jennifer Burns, Daniel Immerwahr, Healan Gaston, Daniel Geary, Nils Gilman, Andrew Jewett, Susan Nance, Kevin Shultz, and Gene Zubovich.

Hollinger was president of the Organization of American Historians in 2010-11. He is an elected fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been a trustee of the National Humanities Center and of the Institute For Advanced Study. He is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society.

Personal life

Since 1967, he has been married to legal scholar Joan Heifetz Hollinger. He is the father of two children.

Works

• Hollinger, David A.; Capper, Charles (1989). The American Intellectual Tradition: A Sourcebook. 1620-1865. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-505774-4.
• Hollinger, David A. (April 1989). In the American Province: Studies in the History and Historiography of Ideas. JHU Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-3826-2.
• Hollinger, David A. (2006-02-28). Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-03065-3.
• Hollinger, David A. (2006-03-06). Cosmopolitanism and Solidarity: Studies in Ethnoracial, Religious, and Professional Affiliation in the United States. Univ of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-21663-4.
• Hollinger, David A. (2013-04-21). After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History. Princeton University Press. ISBN 1-4008-4599-8.
• Hollinger, David A. (2017-10-17). Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World But Changed America. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-15843-3
• Hollinger, David A. (2017). When this Mask of Flesh is Broken: The Story of an American Protestant Family. Outskirts Press. ISBN 1-9772-1114-3.
• Hollinger, David A. (2022). Christianity’s American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691233888

Presentations and Panels

• "The Role of Christianity in Modern US History" with David Hollinger, [Video] (Fall 2023)
• Christianity’s American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular (Princeton University, Wilson Center, Oct. 17, 2022)
• Race in the Age of Obama, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, St. Louis, MO (2012)
• Kuhn, the Quotidian, and the Question of God's Death, Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society at the University of California, Berkeley (2013)

Interviews

• The Marc Steiner Show: ‘This is the hill to die on for universities’: free speech can survive Trump, but not without a fight (November 13, 2025)
• "Their Generation" The Long View Substack by Julian Zelizer, An interview with David Hollinger (January 30, 2026)

External links

• U.C. Berkeley faculty page
• http://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-Cant-the-Sciencesthe/142239