Daniel Greene named president and librarian of Newberry Library

Daniel Greene, an adjunct professor of history in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, has been appointed the next president and librarian of the Newberry Library in Chicago effective Aug. 19.

Greene, whose research interests include public history, Holocaust history and memory, U.S. history, and modern Jewish history, also has served as exhibitions curator and historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). He will succeed David Spadafora, who has led the Newberry as president and librarian since 2005. 

“An accomplished scholar devoted to the public humanities, Danny will propel the Newberry forward with both innovative thinking and a commitment to the mission that has sustained us as an institution over the past 132 years,” said David Hilliard, chair of the Newberry Board of Trustees. “Danny’s profoundly important work with the Holocaust Memorial Museum is consonant with our own institutional priorities, and we look forward to seeing him further the Newberry’s mission to promote the humanities and forge connections among scholars and between scholars and the public.”

In 2018, Greene curated “Americans and the Holocaust,” a groundbreaking exhibition examining the major cultural forces — isolationism, xenophobia, racism and antisemitism — that influenced Americans’ responses to Nazism in the 1930s and 40s. Through Greene’s extensive research and vivid storytelling, the exhibition immersed visitors in a harrowing chapter in American history while illuminating the complex and painful reality of widespread ambivalence toward victims of the Holocaust.

Greene is the author of “The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism: The Menorah Association and American Diversity,” which was awarded the Saul Viener Prize by the American Jewish Historical Society. He is also the co-editor and co-author of “Home Front: Daily Life in the Civil War North,” the companion text to the exhibition he curated at the Newberry.