Service

I became Professor of Politics at Princeton University on 1 August 2009, and was named to an endowed professorship as Class of 1943 Professor of Politics as of 1 July 2014.  On the same date I became Associate Chair of the Department of Politics, for two calendar years.  On 1 July 2016 I became Director of the University Center for Human Values, and began a second four-year term in this role on 1 July 2020, which concluded on 30 June 2024. I am also an associated faculty member in the Department of Classics and the Department of Philosophy, and serve on the executive committee of the Program in Classical Philosophy. Outside Princeton, I serve as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Joint Centre for History and Economics, Cambridge University, and as the Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College, a non-degree-granting institution in London founded in 1597 to provide free public lectures. 

At Princeton, I was the founding director of the University Center for Human Values’ undergraduate certificate program (now a minor) in Values and Public Life.   I am co-convenor of the Princeton Climate Futures Initiative, based at the Princeton Environmental Institute, which grew out of a research community on ‘Communicating Uncertainty: Science, Institutions, and Ethics in the Politics of Global Climate Change, sponsored by the Princeton Institute of International and Regional Studies. I was a Trustee and member of the editorial board of Princeton University Press from 2015-2019, chairing the board in 2018-19.  I serve on the editorial boards of the American Political Science Review and the ancient political philosophy journal Polis.

I have also served at Princeton on the Executive Committees of the University Center for Human Values, the Program in Classical Philosophy, the Program in Hellenic Studies, the Program in Law and Public Affairs, the Program in Political Philosophy, and the Princeton Writing Program, and also on the Tanner Lectures Committee. I am or have been an Affiliated Faculty member of the High Meadows Environmental Institute and of C-PREE (the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment), and Associated Faculty member of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and of the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies, Vice Chair of the Board of the Center for Jewish Life, and Faculty Fellow of Rockefeller College.

From 2012-15, I was a member of the Steering Committee of the Hanadiv Humanities Initiative, of the Yad Hanadiv Foundation.  From 2011-14, I was a member of the Executive Council of the Foundations of Political Theory section of the American Political Science Association, and in 2014-15 chaired the APSA Benjamin Lippincott Award committee.   In 2015 I joined a working group on climate change of the SSRC (Social Sciences Research Council) which concluded in 2019; in 2021-22 I was a senior member of a climate change research initiative based at Harvard University.

Before coming to Princeton, I taught political thought for fifteen years in the Faculty of History of the University of Cambridge, where I was also a Fellow of King’s College and Associate Director of the College’s Centre for History and Economics (now a joint Centre/Center with Harvard University).  While at Cambridge, I served for two years as the Academic Secretary of the Faculty of History, responsible for the undergraduate teaching program and for many other aspects of the Faculty’s work, and also served for two years as an elected member of the University Council, which is the highest governing body of the University of Cambridge.  I was for four years a Syndic of the Cambridge University Press and a member of the Management Board of the Cambridge Programme for Industry (now the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership).

I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS) and also a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA: not an honorary election).  I am or have been a member of professional associations including the American Historical Association, the American Philosophical Association, the American Political Science Association, the Britain and Ireland Association for Political Thought, the Society for Classical Studies, and the International Plato Society.