is an Americanist whose work straddles comparative politics and political theory as well as political and social history. President of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University. Publications include: Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns (with Andreas Kalyvas, 2008) and When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (2005).
Solidarity in liberal democracies is pluralistic, argues political scientist Ira Katznelson; it allows particularities of time and place while satisfying a widely held human interest. Democracy, too, takes a variety of forms and is best measured by historical standards.
