Richard. C. Kagan (born June 24, 1938, in North Hollywood, California, of Jewish immigrant parents from the Ukraine and Poland) is an American professor of East Asian history and a political activist. His undergraduate and master's degrees were awarded from the University of California Berkeley. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1969. For over three decades (1973-2005) he taught East Asian history at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, and currently holds the rank of Professor Emeritus.