Alan Charles Kors, a University of Pennsylvania history professor, is one of 12 recipients of the 2005 National Humanities Medal.

The National Humanities Medal, first awarded in 1989 by the National Endowment for the Humanities as the Charles Frankel Prize, honors individuals and organizations whose work deepens the nation's understanding of the humanities, broadens citizens' engagement with the humanities or helps preserve and expand America's access to important humanities resources.

Kors has taught European intellectual history at Penn since 1968.  He has published extensively on the conceptual revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries and was recently editor-in-chief of the "Oxford Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment," an international project published in four volumes in 2002.  

Kors served on the National Council on the Humanities for six years and has served on the executive boards of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and The Historical Society.

Since 1998 he has chaired the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and has won numerous awards for the defense of academic freedom. He writes and lectures widely on academic life.  

In 1998, he coauthored, with Harvey Silvergate, "The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America Campuses."