Prithviraj Datta
Government Department
Franklin & Marshall College
pdatta@fandm.edu
I am a visiting assistant professor in the Government Department at Franklin & Marshall College. My research and teaching interests lie primarily at the intersection of contemporary political theory, public law, and American politics, with specific interests in democratic theory, constitutional law, and American social and political thought. I received a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University in 2014. I also hold law degrees from the University of Oxford and the National Law School of India. I have previously been a postdoctoral fellow at F&M, the McCoy Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University, as well as at the Political Theory Project at Brown University.
My research revolves around two main themes. In the first instance, I am concerned with the problem of money in politics, and with the increasing influence that the wealthy exert over political outcomes in the United States. Pursuant to this theme, I am currently working on a book manuscript titled Why Campaign Finance Matters: Normatively Evaluating the American Electoral Spending Regime, which relies on insights from democratic theory and neo-republican theory to offer a novel critique of the American campaign finance system.
I am also concerned, in my research, with examining the extent to which the right to free speech ought to be protected against governmental regulation in liberal democratic societies. Recent work in this theme includes projects which seek to explain why John Stuart Mill favored near-absolute protection for the freedom of speech, identify the right to advocacy as being the central component of the protection that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution offers for the freedom of expression, and query whether campaign spending ought to be protected as speech by courts under the First Amendment.
I have taught courses on global justice, democratic theory, the history of political thought, and constitutional law and theory at F&M, Stanford, Brown, and Harvard. In Fall 2022, I will be offering courses on Modern Political Theory and Global Justice.