Kenneth Prewitt (born March 16, 1936) an American academic who is the Carnegie Professor of Social Affairs at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs,[2] where he is also director of the Scholarly Knowledge Project.

in 1959 from Washington University in St. Louis, and a 1963 Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University with a thesis "Career patterns and role-orientations: an inquiry into the political behavior of city councilmen"[3] and was a Danforth Fellow at the Harvard Divinity School from 1959 to 1960.

He has also served as president of the Social Science Research Council, as senior vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation, and as Dean of the Graduate School at the New School University.

Prewitt has two children by his first marriage, and is now married to Susan Mullin Vogel, an art historian, museum curator and leader, and filmmaker.

He has received a Guggenheim fellowship and a Lifetime Career Award from the American Political Science Association,.