Robert Dallek (born May 16, 1934) is an American historian specializing in American presidents. He is a recently retired Professor of History at Boston University and has previously taught at Columbia University, UCLA, and Oxford. He has won the Bancroft Prize and numerous other awards for scholarship and teaching.
He attended the University of Illinois, graduating with a B.A. in history in June 1955. He then spent several years at Columbia University, earning an M.A. in February 1957, and a Ph.D. in June 1964. While working on his Ph.D., he was a history instructor at Columbia.
From 1964 until 1994 Dallek advanced from assistant to full professor of history at UCLA. By 1966, he was a graduate advisor in the Department of History at UCLA and served in that position for two years. From 1972 to 1974, he served as Vice-Chair of the UCLA Department of History. From 1981-1985, he was a Research Associate at the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute. In 1993, he was a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology, and from 1994 to 1995 he was the Harmsworth Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford. In 1995 he was awarded an honorary M.A. by Oxford University for his work there. Since 1996 he has been a Visiting Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas and a Professor of History at Boston University. In 2004 and 2005, he was Montgomery Fellow and a visiting professor in the history and government departments at Dartmouth College. Since 2007, he has taught courses at Stanford University in California.