Robin D.G. Kelley is an American historian and academic who holds the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He wrote a 2009 biography of Thelonious Monk and the book Freedom Dreams, and he taught at New York University, Columbia, and the University of Southern California before joining UCLA. Among the books under his name, he edited Our History Has Always Been Contraband, a set of essays defending Black Studies, and To Make Our World Anew, a history of African Americans, with Earl Lewis.
