[2] Nelson attended Harvard College, where he was inducted to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior and graduated summa cum laude.
[1] His thesis, entitled The Reluctant Humanist: Thomas Hobbes and the Classical Historians won the Hoopes Prize, an award given for exceptional undergraduate theses.
He has also been awarded fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies.
According to Diana Muir, Nelson is "one of a group of scholars engaged in the enterprise of re-evaluating the origins of modern political theory".
"[9] Nelson, along with Harry Lewis, Margo Seltzer, and Richard Thomas, wrote an op-ed expressing their opposition to Harvard's proposed policy to ban members of final clubs and other officially unrecognized social clubs from holding captaincies or receiving endorsements for top fellowships.