"The Liberal Premise" Featuring Ira Katznelson, Famed Political Scientist and Historian

Location

Ira Katznelson, famed American political scientist and historian and currently the Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University, will deliver two public talks at the Woodrow Wilson School as part of the 2012 Princeton Lectures in Politics and Public Affairs. The lectures, "The People and the State: Reflections on American Political Development," are co-sponsored by the Wilson School, the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics (CSDP) and Princeton University Press (PUP).Katznelson is known for his influential research on the liberal state, inequality, social knowledge, and institutions, primarily focused on the United States. His work has straddled comparative politics and political theory, as well as political and social history.

Katznelson’s talks will be held at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 ("The Liberal Premise") Dodds Auditorium and Thursday, March 29, 2012 ("Membership and Might")in Bowl 016, Robertson Hall.

A 1966 graduate of Columbia University, Katznelson earned his Ph.D. in history from Cambridge University in 1969. In 1969 he also co-founded the journal “Politics and Society.” Katznelson taught at Columbia from 1969 to 1974, at the University of Chicago from 1974 to 1983, and at the New School for Social Research from 1983 to 1994. He was chair of the department of political science at Chicago from 1979 to 1982 and dean of the New School from 1983 to 1989. In 1994, Katznelson returned to Columbia as the Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History.

Katznelson has authored, co-authored and co-edited almost two dozen books, and published more than sixty journal articles. His book “Liberalism’s Crooked Circle: Letters to Adam Michnik” (1996) earned him APSA’s Michael Harrington Prize. And “Desolation and Enlightenment” (2003) won Katznelson the David and Elaine Spitz Award of the Conference of Political Thought, which is given to the best book in liberal or democratic theory.

His new works include a book titled, “Fear Itself: New Deal Democracy in a Southern Cage” (forthcoming: Norton, 2012), and “Liberal Reason,” a collection of his essays on the character of modern social knowledge.

Katznelson served as president of the American Political Science Association (APSA) for 2005-2006. He has also served as president of the politics and history section of APSA, president of the Social Science History Association, and chair of the Russell Sage Foundation Board of Trustees. Katznelson has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Association.