Jan-Werner Müller (Politics), a renowned scholar in democratic theory and the history of political thought, has been named the Class of 1943 University Professor of Politics. University Professorships are Princeton’s highest honor for faculty.
A member of the Princeton faculty since 2005, Müller serves as director of the Political Philosophy Program at Princeton. He is the founding director of the Academic Freedom Initiative at Princeton and also founding director of the Forum for the History of Political Thought, both hosted through the University Center for Human Values.
In 2024-25, Müller served as an Old Dominion Research Professor in the Humanities Council, where he worked on a book project, “Christian Democracy: A New Intellectual History.” The book traces the attempts to reconcile Catholicism and modern democracy. During that year, he also served as a Faculty Fellow for the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts.
Beyond classic topics in political theory, Müller’s research interests span from the relationship between architecture and politics to the normative implications of structural transformations of the public sphere. His appointment as the Class of 1943 University Professor of Politics is effective March 28.
