Nancy K. MacLean is an American historian. She is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University. MacLean's research focuses on race, gender, labor history and social movements in 20th century U.S. history, with particular attention to the U.S. South. Academic career In 1981, MacLean completed a four-year, combined-degree, B.A./M.A program in history at Brown University, graduating magna cum laude. In 1989, she received a Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studied under Linda Gordon. MacLean's doctoral thesis later became her first book, published as Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (1994). From 1989 to 2010 MacLean taught at Northwestern University, where she served as chairperson of the Department of History, and as the Peter B. Ritzma Professor in the Humanities. MacLean spoke in favor of and participated in the Living Wage Campaign. In 2010, MacLean moved to Duke University. She served as co-chair of Scholars for a Progressive North Carolina (SPNC), which has since been renamed Scholars for North Carolina's Future (SNCF). In 2013, MacLean participated in SPNC panels and forums held in opposition to the legislative agenda of Republican majority of the North Carolina General Assembly. Work Behind the Mask of Chivalry (1994) Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan, published in 1994, explores how some five million ordinary, white Protestant men joined the second Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. MacLean argued that the Ku Klux Klan was an organization “at once mainstream and extreme” that was hostile to both big government and to unionism; that Klan philosophy was anti-elitist and anti-black, but that their patriarchal stance for family values helped achieve a mass following; and that they demonstrated political affinity with the varieties of European fascism of the 1920s. Reception Behind the Mask of Chivalry received four scholarly awards, and reviewers said it is "a remarkable, readable, and important book," especially for students of the American South, of African American history, and of political violence in the U.S., which is characterized by an "ambitious scope" and "graced by artful, energetic prose." The Organization of American Historians awarded the James A. Rawley Prize to Behind the Mask of Chivalry. However, William D. Jenkins said that MacLean's historical analysis is "well-written, yet flawed," because it is "too readily dismissive of the influence of religious and cultural