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| Alan Charles Kors | |
|---|---|
| Name | Alan Charles Kors |
| Birth date | 1943 |
| Birth place | Philadelphia |
| Occupation | Historian, Professor, Scholar |
| Employer | University of Pennsylvania |
| Known for | Scholar of Enlightenment history; co-founder of Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression |
| Alma mater | University of Pennsylvania (B.A.), University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D.) |
Alan Charles Kors
Alan Charles Kors is an American historian and emeritus professor noted for his scholarship on the European Enlightenment, intellectual history of France, and the history of scepticism and witchcraft. He served on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania and co-founded a prominent free-speech advocacy organization. His work bridges studies of figures such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Denis Diderot with institutional debates involving American Association of University Professors, National Endowment for the Humanities, and public controversies about academic freedom.
Kors was born in Philadelphia and raised in a period shaped by postwar American intellectual life, adolescence concurrent with debates in McCarthyism and the rise of New Criticism. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania and pursued graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied under historians who specialized in European history, French Revolution scholarship, and intellectual history. His doctoral work addressed topics in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France and engaged primary archives from libraries such as the Bibliothèque nationale de France and collections related to the Huguenots.
Kors joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania where he taught courses on the European Enlightenment, the history of ideas, and intellectual movements in France and England. He supervised doctoral candidates who went on to appointments at institutions including Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, and liberal arts colleges. Kors participated in panels at the American Historical Association, the Modern Language Association, and the American Philosophical Society. He held visiting appointments and delivered lectures at universities such as Oxford University, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and the École Normale Supérieure.
Kors's scholarship centers on the history of scepticism, the narrative of witchcraft prosecutions, and the intellectual currents of the Enlightenment in France and Britain. He authored and edited monographs and essays engaging texts by Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Pierre Bayle, and Montesquieu, and analyzed institutions like the Académie française and the Sorbonne. His books and articles appear in journals and presses associated with scholarly communities such as the American Historical Review, the Journal of Modern History, and university presses like the Princeton University Press and the University of Chicago Press. Kors produced influential work on witchcraft trials by examining court records from regions including Brittany, Normandy, and the Holy Roman Empire; he re-evaluated interpretations advanced by historians such as Keith Thomas and Carlo Ginzburg. He edited collections on Enlightenment dissent and compiled annotated bibliographies that intersect with scholarship by Jonathan Israel and Robert Darnton. Kors also contributed to encyclopedic projects, collaborated with editors at the Cambridge University Press, and presented keynote addresses at conferences organized by the Society for French Historical Studies and the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.
In the 1990s Kors co-founded the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, originally the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, with legal scholar Harvey Silverglate to defend civil liberties on college campuses. The organization engaged litigation and public education campaigns involving cases at institutions including Princeton University, Rutgers University, and University of California campuses. Kors participated in amicus briefs submitted to the United States Supreme Court and worked with advocates linked to the American Civil Liberties Union and the Liberal Education and America's Promise network. His advocacy intersected with debates involving the University of Chicago's free expression policies and controversies over speech codes promulgated by student affairs offices and administrations across the Ivy League and public university systems.
Kors received fellowships and awards from organizations such as the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was elected to scholarly societies including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institut de France's networks of correspondents. His teaching and service earned recognition from the University of Pennsylvania and citations in national publications like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal for his academic and public work.
Kors's personal network included collaborations with scholars and public intellectuals such as Isaiah Berlin, Hannah Arendt's students, and contemporaries in Enlightenment studies. His legacy in historiography persists in graduate curricula on the European Enlightenment and in ongoing debates about campus speech and civil liberties shaped by organizations he helped found. Former students and colleagues continue to cite his archival methods and his efforts to connect historical scholarship to contemporary institutional policy discussions. He remains a figure referenced in conversations among historians of France, legal scholars addressing First Amendment issues, and advocates at organizations focused on academic freedom.
Category:Historians of the Enlightenment Category:University of Pennsylvania faculty