From our 2004 international conference “From Chattel Bondage to State Servitude: Slavery in the 20th Century” to our 2012 conference on “Abolition, Past and Present: Scholars, Activists, and the Challenge of Contemporary Slavery,” and our 2018 conference “Fighting Modern Slavery What Works,” the Gilder Lehrman Center has sought to forge a field of study about the origins and nature of current human trafficking and bonded labor systems in the world.