Arthur Eugene Bestor Jr. (September 20, 1908 – December 13, 1994) was a historian of the United States, and during the 1950s a noted critic of American public education.

In 1904-1944 his father was the president of the Chautauqua Institution, an educational and religious community in western New York State.

Bestor was raised and educated in Chautauqua and New York City, where he attended the Horace Mann School.

At the time of his death he was working on an intellectual history of European philosophical influences on the framers of the US constitution, with particular focus on the writings of Montaigne.

Bestor was one of the first specialists on American constitutional law to publicly call for the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, in a piece published in The New Republic in May 1973.