Kelman did post-doctoral work at Johns Hopkins University while also spending time teaching psychology at the Baltimore College of Commerce.
After a stint at the National Institute of Mental Health, Kelman served as a lecturer on Social Psychology at Harvard University (1957–1962).
[5] In 1971, Kelman helped circulate a petition calling on faculty members at Harvard to refuse to pay their federal telephone excise tax in protest against the U.S. war against Vietnam.
[6] Inspired by the scholarship of John Burton, Kelman organized tens of unofficial gatherings of Arabs and Israelis.
[2][1] Kelman was the recipient of the 2000 James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science in part for his service as "a model of the social responsibility of psychologists".