Eric Nelson (historian) facts for kids

Eric Matthew Nelson, born on August 13, 1977, is an American historian. He is a professor who teaches about government at Harvard University.

Early Life and Education

Eric Nelson was born in 1977 and grew up in New York City. When he was a child, he often visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

College Years

Nelson attended Harvard College. He joined a special honor society called Phi Beta Kappa during his third year. He graduated with the highest honors, known as summa cum laude. His college paper, called The Reluctant Humanist: Thomas Hobbes and the Classical Historians, won the Hoopes Prize. This award is given for excellent college papers. While at Harvard, he wrote for The Harvard Crimson newspaper. He often wrote about how history connects to today's world.

Graduate Studies

After Harvard, Nelson went to graduate school in the United Kingdom. He was a Marshall Scholar, which is a special award for students to study abroad. In 2000, he earned a master's degree (M.Phil.) from Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. His master's paper was about how Greek ideas influenced English political thought. Two years later, he earned his Ph.D. (a higher degree) from the same college.

Personal Background

Nelson is Jewish. His grandparents were survivors of the Holocaust, a terrible event in history. From 2012 to 2015, he was the Director of the Harvard Center for Jewish Studies. He can read seven languages: English, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, Italian, and German. He can speak four of these languages.

Academic Career

After getting his Ph.D., Nelson taught at Cambridge for another year. In 2004, he returned to Harvard as a Junior Fellow. By 2009, he became the Frederick S. Danziger Associate Professor of Government. Just one year later, at age 32, he was granted tenure. This means he earned a permanent teaching position. In 2014, he became the Robert M. Beren Professor of Government. He has also received special awards called fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Published Works

Since returning to Harvard, Nelson has published four books. He is currently working on a fifth book. This new book will explore how religious ideas connect with modern ideas about freedom and society.

Teaching and Research

Professor Nelson teaches classes at Harvard on many interesting topics. These include the ideas of Thomas Hobbes, the American Revolution, and the English Revolution. He also teaches about Jewish political traditions, different types of government like monarchy and republicanism, and the Age of Enlightenment.

Other scholars have praised Nelson's work. For example, Diana Muir says he is helping to rethink how modern political ideas began. Nathan Perl-Rosenthal noted that Nelson's book Hebrew Republic shows how important it is to understand religious beliefs to understand politics.

Nelson, along with other professors, wrote an article against a proposed rule at Harvard. This rule would have stopped students in certain social clubs from becoming team captains or getting special awards.

Books by Eric Nelson

• The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought, (Cambridge University Press, 2004)
• The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought, (Harvard University Press, 2010). This book won the 2012 Laura Shannon Prize.
• He also edited Hobbes's translations of the Iliad and Odyssey for a special collection of Hobbes's works (The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2008).
• The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding (Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 2014)
• The Theology of Liberalism (Harvard University Press, 2019)