Pratap Bhanu Mehta
2023-2024 Hauser Global Law School Program Annual Dinner Keynote Speaker

Pratap Bhanu Mehta is Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi and Laurence S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University. He was previously Vice-Chancellor of Ashoka University and President, Centre for Policy Research. He has also taught as Global Law Faculty at NYU School of Law. He has published widely on intellectual history, Indian Constitutional Law, political theory, and international affairs. He is the author of The Burden of Democracy (Penguin 2003) and has produced several edited volumes. He is co-editor, with Madhav Khosla and Sujit Choudhry, of The Oxford Handbook to the Indian Constitution; with Milan Vaishnav and Devesh Kapur, of Rethinking Public Institutions in India; with Niraja Jayal, of The Oxford Companion to Indian Politics. He is also Honorary Fellow, St. John’s College Oxford and Fellow of the British Academy.

Professor Mehta’s policy experience includes being Convenor of the Prime Minister of India’s Knowledge Commission (2005–2007) and member of India’s National Security Advisory Board. He is also Editorial Consultant to The Indian Express and contributes prolifically to public debates. He has also published in the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Liberties, and numerous dailies. He is a winner of the Malcolm Adiseshiah Prize, and of the Infosys Prize 2011. His citation for the Infosys Prize, written by a jury chaired by Amartya Sen read: “Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta has established himself as one of India’s finest scholars and public minds, who has inspired a new generation of intellectual enquiry. He has contributed not only to political philosophy and social theory in general but has also addressed urgent issues of Indian politics and public policy. Mehta has shown an exemplary willingness to broaden the sphere of public reason and to challenge reigning orthodoxies, while remaining committed to institution building.”

Professor Mehta has served on the editorial boards of American Political Science Review, Political Theory, and the Journal of Moral Philosophy. He has chaired the prestigious Holberg Committee. He graduated from Oxford in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and has a PhD in politics from Princeton.