Donald R. Kelley

Donald R. Kelley (Harvard BA 1953; Columbia MA 1956, PhD 1962) is the James Westfall Thompson Professor of History Emeritus, Rutgers University. Prior to joining the faculty at Rutgers University, he was the Wilson Professor of History at the University of Rochester (1973-91) and before that he was at Harvard University 1972-73 and SUNY Binghamton. From 1985 to 2005, he was the Executive Editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas.

His fellowships and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship 1974-75; 1981-82; Institute for Advanced Study 1969-70; 1977-78; 96-97; Woodrow Wilson Fellow 1992-93; Davis Center Fellow, Princeton 1987-88; National Humanities Center 1984; N.E.H. Fellow 1977-78; A.C.L.S. Fellow 1967-68; and American Historical Association Award for Scholarly Distinction, 2013.

Kelley's books include Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship (Columbia 1970), The Beginning of Ideology: Consciousness and Society in the French Reformation (Cambridge 1981), The Human Measure: Western Social Thought and the Legal Tradition (Harvard 1990), Renaissance Humanism (New York 1991), and Descent of Ideas: History of Intellectual History (London, 2002), among many others. 

In addition to his membership in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Kelley is a member of the American Philosophical Society; the International Society for Intellectual History (past president); the American Historical Association; the Renaissance Society; the Medieval Academy; the Forkosch Prize Committee (past chair); Jacques Barzun Prize Committee (past chair) and he served on the editorial board of New Vico Studies and as a consulting editor for the Dictionary of Early Modern Europe, New Dictionary of Ideas.