Biography

Anthony D. (Tony) Fels, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of San Francisco, is a social and religious historian of the United States. Before coming to USF in 1989, he taught for a year each at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and California State University, East Bay (Hayward). At USF he taught US history, historical methods, US religious history, US racial and ethnic history, Native American history, the American Revolution, Civil War & Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age. He chaired the History Department in 1997-2000 and 2003-2006.

His book on the Salem witch hunt came out in 2018, and he has published and written numerous articles on this topic and on the place of Freemasonry in American religious history, the subject of his doctoral dissertation. After retiring from teaching in 2018, he returned to the Philadelphia area, where he grew up. There, he has picked up on a facet of his writing begun during his academic career – producing historically-based commentaries on current developments in university life and education, race relations, and contemporary politics. He lives in Media, Pennsylvania.