Erik Bleich is a professor of political science. He joined the Middlebury faculty in 1999.

His most recent book, The Freedom to Be Racist? How the United States and Europe Struggle to Preserve Freedom and Combat Racism (Oxford University Press, 2011), explores how the United States and European liberal democracies balance a love of freedom with the need to curb racism and racist speech.

Bleich’s current areas of research focus on race and ethnicity in West European politics.

He has written articles on topics such as hate crimes, political violence, Islamophobia, ethnic riots, immigration and integration, and the legacies of colonialism on contemporary policymaking.

He is also the author of Race Politics in Britain and France: Ideas and Policymaking since the 1960s, and the editor and a contributor to the book Muslims and the State in the Post-9/11 West.

Bleich graduated from Brown University in 1991 and received his master's and doctorate from Harvard University. He also received a Certificat d'Etudes Politiques from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris in 1990.

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