Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Member

Pratap Bhanu Mehta is the Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University. He has also held positions as Vice-Chancellor of Ashoka University and President of the Center for Policy Research in Delhi, India. Mehta has taught at Harvard University, Ashoka University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and served as Global Faculty at NYU Law School.

Mehta is a renowned scholar with numerous publications in political theory, history of ideas, Indian constitutional law, and politics in India. His authored works include The Burden of Democracy (Penguin 2003) and he has co-edited several volumes, including The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution with Madhav Khosla and Sujit Choudhary. His forthcoming work focuses on philosophical ideas about religion in 20th-century India.

He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a 2020 SSRC Fellow. In the realm of policy, Mehta has served as Convenor of the Prime Minister of India’s Knowledge Commission (2005-2007) and as a member of India’s National Security Advisory Board. He also acts as an editorial consultant for the Indian Express and is a prolific contributor to public debates. His writings have appeared in the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and other prominent dailies.

Mehta was awarded the Infosys Prize in 2011, with a jury chaired by Amartya Sen commending him as one of India’s finest scholars and public minds, inspiring a new generation of intellectual inquiry. He has been recognized for broadening the sphere of public reason, challenging orthodoxies, and contributing to institution building.

Mehta earned his undergraduate degree in PPE from Oxford and holds a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton. He was among the first cohort of graduate student fellows at the Center for Human Values.