Alan Charles Kors

Who is Alan Charles Kors?

Alan Charles Kors is Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches the intellectual history of the 17th and 18th centuries. He has received both the Lindback Foundation Award and the Ira Abrams Memorial Award for distinguished college teaching. Dr. Kors graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1964, and he received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, in European History. He is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.

Kors has written on the history of skeptical, atheistic, and materialist thought in 17th- and 18th-century France, on the Enlightenment in general, on the history of European witchcraft beliefs, and on academic freedom. He was also the Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, which was published in four volumes by Oxford University Press in 2002.

Kors co-founded – with civil rights advocate Harvey A. Silverglate – and served from 2000 to 2006 as chairman of the board of directors of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

He writes pieces for both libertarian and conservative journals on political matters. He is an occasional contributor to Reason. His essay "Can There Be An After Socialism?" was published by the journal "Social Philosophy & Policy"