Marek Jan Chodakiewicz (born July 15, 1962) is a Polish-American historian specializing in Central European history of the 19th and 20th centuries. He teaches at the Patrick Henry College and at the Institute of World Politics. He has been described as conservative and nationalistic, and his attitude towards minorities has been widely criticized. Early life and education Chodakiewicz was born in Warsaw, Poland. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from San Francisco State University in 1988, a M.A. from Columbia University in 1990, a M.Phil. from Columbia University in 1992, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2001. Career Between 2001 and 2003, Chodakiewicz was an assistant professor at the University of Virginia as the holder of the Kościuszko Chair in Polish Studies of the Miller Center of Public Affairs. In 2003, Chodakiewicz was appointed research professor of history and in 2004 professor of history at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., where he teaches and conducts research on East Central Europe and Russia. He is the Kościuszko Chair in Polish Studies at IWP. Chodakiewicz has also served as adjunct professor of international telations at Patrick Henry College since 2008. In 2003, Chodakiewicz received the Józef Mackiewicz Literary Prize in Warsaw, for his two-volume book of history entitled Ejszyszki. According to Chodakiewicz, his work refutes Yaffa Eliach's allegations of a 1944 post-liberation pogrom in Eišiškės against Jews by the Polish Home Army, in which Eliach said she survived beneath the body of her mother and baby brother who were shot multiple times after being discovered hiding in a closet, and as promoted in the American media and her book. Per Chodakiewicz, Jewish bystanders were killed accidentally during an "anti-Soviet assault by the underground", and not in a pogrom. However, per Chodakiewicz "unfortunately, and quite typically, unlike the charges, the refutation received no publicity in the American media". Chodakiewicz's publication was reviewed positively in the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, whose editor Adam Michnik had previously called Eliach's account an "insult" to Poland. In April 2005, Chodakiewicz was appointed by President George W. Bush for a five-year term to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Controversy erupted towards the end of his term over Chodakiewicz's claims in several publications that Polish nationalists who murdered Jews after the Holocaust were not motivated by antisemitism. Chodakiewicz's appointment was criticized by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which said Chodakiewicz had published in