Ben Schmack

Ben Schmack is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of American Studies at Kenyon. He was previously a public history postdoctoral associate for the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research from 2022 to 2023. Before that he taught courses as a graduate student at the University of Kansas, where he earned his Ph.D. in American studies in 2022. He also earned a master's degree in history from Northern Illinois University in 2015.

Schmack’s research focuses on antifascist and antiracist activism emanating from the radical Left throughout the twentieth century in the United States. In particular, his dissertation and current book project discusses feuding between various American communist groups and the Ku Klux Klan from the 1920s until the present day. He uses this feud as a lens through which to analyze how the American state surveils and represses groups on the political margins in a manner that maintains systemic white supremacy.