Anthony D. Fels

Anthony D. (Tony) Fels, Professor Emeritus of History, is a social and religious historian of the United States. At USF he taught US history, historical methods, US religious history, US racial and ethnic history, Native American history, American Revolution, Civil War and Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age. He chaired the History Department in 1997-2000 and 2003-2006, retiring from teaching in 2018. His book on the Salem witch hunt came out in 2018, and he has recently returned to the subject of his doctoral dissertation: the place of Freemasonry in American religious history.

Please email Prof. Fels for a full c.v.

• PhD, History, Stanford University, 1987
• MA, History, Stanford University, 1979
• BA, History, Cornell University, 1971

• Fels, T., "Jew Hatred Is Not the Problem at Penn (or Other Universities). Radicalism Is," Tablet Magazine, March 31, 2024.

• Fels, T., "Compromise is possible in Central Bucks Pride flag conflict," Bucks County Herald, February 2, 2023.

• Fels, T., "What Elizabeth Johnson's Exoneration Teaches about the Salem Witch Hunt," Witches of Massachusetts Bay, June 6, 2022.

• Fels, T., "A Compromise Is Possible on CRT in the Schools," American Purpose, January 17, 2022.
• Fels, T., "Confessions of Accused Witches," Witches of Massachusetts Bay, July 30, 2021.
• Fels, T., "Traditional Understanding Overshadows Academic Explanations at Rebecca Nurse Commemoration," Witches of Massachusetts Bay, June 28, 2021.
• Fels, T., "Anti-racist Lens Distorts History on New Jersey 'Freeholders,'" History News Network, September 27, 2020
• Fels, T., "The Return of the 'Witch Hunt' Analogy," Quillette, October 27, 2019
• Fels, T. "The Fog of Youth: The Cornell Student Takeover, 50 Years On," Quillette, June 25, 2019
• Fels, T., Switching Sides: How a Generation of Historians Lost Sympathy for the Victims of the Salem Witch Hunt, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018
• Fels, T., "No, Christine Blasey Probably Isn't Behaving Like the Children Who Leveled False Accusations in the Salem Witch Trials," History News Network, September 25, 2018
• Fels, T., "Sex and The Crucible: A Look into Arthur Miller's Inspiration with Tony Fels," JHUP News and Events Blog, January 26, 2018
• Fels. T., "W(h)ither the US History Survey?" Perspectives on History: The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association, March, 2016
• Fels, T., "Has Education at USF Become Too Politicized?" San Francisco Foghorn, February 25, 2015
• Fels, T., "What's Wrong with USF's Minority Dissertation Fellowship Program?" San Francisco Foghorn, April 17, 2014
• Fels, T., "WASC: Accreditor Foxes Guard Collegiate Henhouse," The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, January 25, 2010
• Fels, A., "Is Freemasonry a Religion? Learning from a Nineteenth-Century Masonic Debate," Heredom: The Transactions of the Scottish Rite Research Society 15 (2007): 167-177.
• Fels, A., "Review of The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent, by Thomas Tweed," Critical Review of Books in Religion 7 (1994): 280-282.
• Fels, A. "The Square and the Compass: San Francisco's Freemasons and American Religion, 1870-1900," PhD Dissertation, Stanford University, 1987.
• Fels, A., "Religious Assimilation in a Fraternal Organization: Jews and Freemasonry in Gilded-Age San Francisco," American Jewish History 74 (June 1985): 369-403.