Donald Kalish

Kalish was perhaps best known for his outspoken opposition to the war in Vietnam and later, his opposition to U.S. military involvement in Nicaragua and Grenada. As chairman of the philosophy department of UCLA, Kalish hired Marxist political activist Angela Davis, an act that drew considerable controversy at the time. In 2001, the university's Philosophy Department initiated the Donald Kalish Prize for intellectual excellence, given to the most promising undergraduate student in the department.

Kalish was a founder of the Concerned Faculty of UCLA. He served as a member of the University Committee on Vietnam, and as vice-chairman of Peace Action Council, Los Angeles. He is known for his leadership role with the Peace Action Council in a 1967 protest against President Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam policies at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, which brought out 10,000 people. He was also an organizer of the 1967 March on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War and his activities were prominently chronicled in Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night (1968).

In 1967, Kalish signed a letter declaring his intention to refuse to pay taxes in protest against the U.S. war against Vietnam, and urging other people to also take this stand.

The proof system is set forth in detail in Logic: Techniques of Formal Reasoning by Richard Montague and Donald Kalish, which was published in 1964. Montague died in 1971. Kalish published a second edition of the book in 1980 with Gary Mar. Since the late 1960s, these books have been used as a textbook at many universities, including UCLA.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Kalish earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in psychology and his doctorate in philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. After teaching at Swarthmore College and at UC Berkeley, he joined the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles in 1949.

Donald Kalish (December 4, 1919 – June 8, 2000) was an American logician, educator, and anti-war activist.