Harold Holzer, is the Jonathan F. Fanton Director of The Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College in New York, a post he assumed in 2015 after 23 years as Senior Vice President of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  

For ten years (2000-2010), Holzer also served as Co-Chairman of the U. S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, appointed by President Clinton, and for the six years following as Chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation. In 2008, Holzer was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush. In 2013, he wrote the Lincoln essay in the official program for the re-inauguration of President Obama. He serves as Chairman of The Lincoln Forum, a national organization he has helped lead for 30 years. 

Holzer is the author, co-author, or editor of 56 books on Lincoln and the Civil War. His Lincoln and the Power of the Press won the 2015 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, as well as awards from the Harvard Kennedy School and the Columbia School of Journalism. His latest book is Brought Forth on this Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration (February 2024). 

Holzer’s 2012 Lincoln: How Abraham Lincoln Ended Slavery in America was the official young-adult companion book for the Steven Spielberg film Lincoln, for which Holzer served as script consultant. In 2017, Holzer was awarded the NY State Archives & History Award. He served that year as Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Yeshiva University, and in 2020 taught at Cardozo Law School in New York. Holzer also served three years as the Roger Hertog Fellow at the New-York Historical Society. He has also taught at his home base, Hunter College, where he edited the school’s sesquicentennial book: Hunter150. 

In 2021, Holzer was principal consultant and on-air commentator for the six-part CNN documentary series, Lincoln: Divided We Stand, which attracted an average of 1.3 million visitors per episode. He also appeared in the 2022 History Channel miniseries from Doris Kearns Goodwin, Abraham Lincoln. Holzer has written more than 650 articles and reviews for both scholarly journals and popular magazines, published 17 monographs, and contributed chapters or prefaces to 67 additional volumes.  

Among his other awards are a second-place Lincoln Prize in 2005 for Lincoln at Cooper Union; book prizes from the New England Society, Freedom Foundation, Manuscript Society of America, Civil War Round Table of New York, and Illinois State Historical Society; and lifetime achievement awards from the Lincoln Groups of New York, Washington, Peekskill, Kansas City, and Detroit. He has earned honorary degrees from nine colleges and universities. Holzer is a member of many history boards and advisory committees and in 1995 was co-founder of The Lincoln Forum. He served from 2015-22 as a Trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Holzer lectures throughout the nation. One of his programs, “Lincoln Seen and Heard,” with actor Sam Waterston, was telecast from the White House, the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, the Clinton Presidential Library, the Library of Congress, and Ford’s Theatre. Holzer appears often on C-SPAN, and has been an on-air commentator for CBS, PBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, Fox, and the BBC. He has created and performed his on-stage Lincoln programs with Waterston, Liam Neeson, Richard Dreyfuss, Stephen Lang, Norm Lewis, F. Murray Abraham, Alec Baldwin, Annette Benning, Holly Hunter, Kathleen Chalfant, Chris Noth, Rufus Collins, Dianne Wiest, and the late Fritz Weaver and Philip Bosco. One of his Waterston programs was broadcast on Bill Moyers’ Journal on PBS. 

Holzer spent his early career as a journalist; a speechwriter and events manager for the Mayor of New York; a campaign and Congressional press secretary for Rep. Bella S. Abzug; an aide to New York Governor Mario Cuomo (with whom he co-authored two Lincoln books); and as spokesman for New York’s PBS station, WNET.  He and his wife Edith live in New York City, and have two daughters and two grandsons.