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              Prithviraj Datta
              Assistant Professor of Political Theory
              Government Department
              Franklin & Marshall College
​              [email protected]

I am Assistant Professor of Political Theory at Franklin & Marshall College. My research interests lie primarily at the intersection of contemporary political theory and American politics, with specific interests in democratic theory, neo-republican theory, and political inequality. I hold a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University, read for the BCL and MPhil in Law at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, and received a BA, LL.B degree from the National Law School of India University. I have previously held postdoctoral positions at F&M, the Stanford University Center for Ethics, and the Brown University Political Theory Project.

My research focuses on two themes. In the first instance, I am concerned with the problem of money in politics and the significant influence that the wealthy exert over political decision-making in the United States. I am currently working on a book manuscript entitled Dialing for Dollars, Dialing for Domination: A Republican Critique of the American Campaign Finance System, in which I rely on insights from democratic theory and neo-republican political theory to offer a novel normative evaluation of the American campaign finance system.

I am also concerned, in my research, with the extent to which the right to free speech should be protected against governmental regulation in liberal democratic societies. In recent work on this theme, I seek to explain why John Stuart Mill favored near-absolute protection for the freedom of speech and identify the right to advocacy as a central component of the free speech guarantee of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

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. I am teaching two sections of Modern Political Theory in Spring 2024.