Scott Kaufman

Scott Kaufman is a Board of Research Scholar and professor emeritus of History at Francis Marion University (FMU), where he taught from 2001 to 2026. At FMU, Kaufman served as both chair of the History Department and co-director of the Robert E. McNair Center for Research and Service. Additionally, was named a Board of Trustees Research Scholar, and received the university’s Research and Scholarship, and Distinguished Profess of the Year awards. He is the author, co-author, or editor of thirteen books in the fields of U.S. diplomatic and political history, including Project Plowshare: The Peaceful Use of Nuclear Explosives in Cold War America (Cornell, 2013); Ambition, Pragmatism, and Party: A Political Biography of Gerald R. Ford (Kansas, 2017); and, most recently, Impeachment in U.S. History (Routledge, 2025), which he co-authored with his FMU colleague, Will Bolt.

Kaufman currently serves as chief editor of The Historian, the journal of the collegiate national History honor society, Phi Alpha Theta. He also is working on two projects. The first, which is nearing completion, is titled Waterways to the World: A Comparative and Competitive History of the Panama and Suez Canals. The second, tentatively titled Visions of Futures Past, comes from Kaufman’s love for science fiction and examines how Americans since 1900 have envisioned the future.