Alan M. Kraut is Professor of History at American University in Washington, D.C., where he has taught since 1974, In addition to teaching at American University, in 1995, he was Visiting Professor in the History of Science at Harvard University. He is a specialist in U.S. immigration and ethnic history, the history of medicine I the United States, and nineteenth century U.S. social history. Dr. Kraut is the author of four books and over a hundred articles and book reviews. His books besides The Huddled Masses: The Immigrant in American Society, 1880-1921, second Edition (2001), include an edited volume, Crusaders and Compromisers: Essays on the Relationship of the Antislavery Struggle to the Antebellum Party System (1983), American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933-1945 (co-authored), and Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the "Immigrant Menace" (1994). He is also the editor of the Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the National Archives of the United States published in microfilm by University Publication of America (1991=present). Silent Travelers won several national awards, including the Theodore Saloutos Award from the Immigration and Ethnic history Society and the Phi Alpha Theta Award for the Best Book in History by an established author. Dr. Kraut's scholarship has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, The National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian Institution, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Institutes of Health.

In April 2000, he became the President of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society, the largest organization of immigration scholars in the country. He also serves on the Executive Committee of the Academic Council of the American Jewish Historical Society and the Executive Board of the Society for the History of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of American Ethnic History and has previously serves as a member of the editorial board of The Journal of Immigrant Health.

An active public historian on immigration and public health matters, Dr. Kraut has served as a member of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island History Committee, a consultant to the National park Service, and an adviser to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum (NYC), the Stanford L. Ziff Jewish Museum of Florida, and the Strawbery-Banke Museum (Portsmouth, New Hampshire). He has been a historical consultant to documentaries broadcast on the Public Broadcasting Station and the History Channel./ These include "Journey to America" (1989), "America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference Fear: The Story of Polio" (1998) and "Maters of Life and Death" and "In Search of Ourselves," two episodes in the PBS Series, A Science Odyssey (1998). As a member of the Committee on the Health and Adjustment of Immigrant Children and Families of the National Research Council, Dr. Kraut Participated in a two-year study, From Generation to Generation: The Health and Well-Being of Children in Immigrant Families (1998).

Dr. Kraut was awarded the University Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching in 1984. For the academic year 1999/2000 he was named American University's Scholar/Teacher of the Year, the Institution's highest academic honor.