Baer was born in Columbia, South Carolina. He celebrated his Bar Mitzvah in Germany. Baer received his Bachelor's Degree [BA] from Northwestern University and his PhD from the University of Chicago.[1]
In addition, he has published works on Turks in Germany including “Mistaken for Jews: Turkish PhD Students in Nazi Germany” (German Studies Review) and “Turk and Jew in Berlin: The First Turkish Migration to Berlin and the Shoah” (Comparative Studies in Society & History) as well as German-Jewish converts to Islam including “Protestant Islam in Weimar Germany: Hugo Marcus and ‘The Message of the Holy Prophet Muhammad to Europe.’” (New German Critique) and “Muslim Encounters with Nazism and the Holocaust: The Ahmadi of Berlin and German-Jewish Convert to Islam Hugo Marcus" (The American Historical Review).
Publications
Books
Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008. • Winner, Albert Hourani Prize, Middle East Studies Association, Best Book in Middle East Studies, (2008). (Turkish translation, IV. Mehmet Döneminde Osmanlı Avrupasında İhtida ve Fetih, Hil, 2010)
The Dönme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular Turks. Stanford University Press, California, USA, 2010. (Turkish translation, Selânikli Dönmeler: Musevilikten Dönenler, Müslüman Devrimciler, ve Laik Türkler, Doğan, 2011)
At Meydanı'nda Ölüm: 17. Yüzyıl İstanbul'unda Toplumsal Cinsiyet, Hoşgörü ve İhtida (Death on the Hippodrome: Gender, Tolerance, and Conversion in 17th century Istanbul) (Istanbul: Koç Yayınları, 2016)
Sultanic Saviors and Tolerant Turks: Writing Ottoman Jewish History, Denying the Armenian Genocide (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2020).[2][3][4][5] Winner, 2021 Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prize for Excellence in Armenian Studies (for a book published in 2020), National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR)
German, Jew, Muslim, Gay: The Life and Times of Hugo Marcus (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020)
^Kasbarian, Sossie (2022). "Sultanic Saviors and Tolerant Turks—Writing Ottoman Jewish History, Denying the Armenian Genocide. Marc David Baer (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2020). Pp. 360. $95.00 cloth, $45.00 paper. ISBN: 9780253045416". International Journal of Middle East Studies: 1–3. doi:10.1017/S0020743821001252. S2CID247053108.
^Fishman, Louis (2021). "Sultanic Saviors and Tolerant Turks: Writing Ottoman Jewish History, Denying the Armenian Genocide: by Marc D. Baer, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2020, 360 pp., $95 (Hardover), ISBN 9780253045416, $45 (Paperback), ISBN 9780253045447". Turkish Studies. 22 (5): 826–828. doi:10.1080/14683849.2021.1897466. S2CID233679444.
^Worringer, Renée (2022). "The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs: by Marc David Baer, New York, Basic Books, 2021, 560 pp., $35 (hardcover), ISBN 9781541673809". Turkish Studies. 23 (2): 321–324. doi:10.1080/14683849.2021.2017572. S2CID245591025.