Ira Katznelson

Ira Katznelson (Ph.D., Cambridge, 1969) has been Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University since 1994, and, since 2012, president of the Social Science Research Council.  Previously, he taught at the University of Chicago, chairing its department of political science from 1979 to 1982, and the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, where he was dean from 1983 to 1989.  

His Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (Liveright, 2013) has been awarded the Bancroft Prize in History, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award in Political Science, and the Sidney Hillman Foundation Prize for Book Journalism.  Other recent books include Liberal Beginnings (Cambridge University Press, 2008; with Andreas Kalyvas), When Affirmative Action Was White (Norton, 2006), and Desolation and Enlightenment (Columbia University Press, 2003).

Professor Katznelson served as president of the American Political Science Association in 2005-2006.  He also has been president of the Social Science History Association and a Guggenheim Fellow.  He is a Research Associate at Cambridge University’s Centre for History and Economics and a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society.