Kott traveled to the United States in 1965 on a scholarship from the Ford Foundation. He lectured at Yale and Berkeley, but spent the years 1969 to 1983 teaching at Stony Brook University until he retired. The Polish authorities refused to extend his passport after three years, at which point he decided to defect. As a result, he was stripped of his professorship at Warsaw University. A poet, translator, and literary critic, he became one of the more prolific essayists of the Polish school in America. He died in Santa Monica, California after a heart attack in 2001.