At the time of his death, he held the title "Newton C. Farr professor emeritus of American history and culture".
Kammen was born in 1936 in Rochester, New York, grew up in the Washington, D.C., area, and was educated at the George Washington University and Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1964 after studying under Bernard Bailyn.
He began teaching at Cornell upon completion of his graduate studies at Harvard and taught until retiring to emeritus status in 2008.
Beginning as a scholar of the colonial period of American history, his interests eventually broadened to include American legal, cultural, and social issues of the 19th and 20th centuries.
One of his first major books, People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization, won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1973.