Alan Charles Kors

Co-founder and Chairman Emeritus

Alan Charles Kors (Ph.D., Harvard University) teaches European intellectual history at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is professor of history and holds the George H. Walker Endowed Term Chair.

Kors has fought for academic freedom since his arrival at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1993, he defended Eden Jacobowitz in the infamous “water buffalo case,” which led to the writing of The Shadow University (1998) and to the founding of FIRE, both with Harvey Silverglate. Kors has been elected four times to the University and School Committees on Academic Freedom and Responsibility by his colleagues. He has received two awards for distinguished college teaching and numerous awards for his defense of academic freedom. He has also written and lectured widely on the assault upon liberty and freedom of conscience on America’s campuses. In 2005, he was awarded a National Humanities Medal.

Kors has published extensively on the conceptual revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries, and produced three taped series on the period for The Teaching Company. He was editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment (four volumes, 2002). He is married with two children and lives in suburban Philadelphia.


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