Daniel Luban is an assistant professor of political science at Columbia specializing in political theory. His main academic interests are in the history of modern social and political thought (with a particular focus on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and in theories of capitalism and economic order.
Luban is completing a book on early modern social theory entitled Children of Pride, under contract with Cambridge University Press. He is also in the early stages of a second book project on coercion and its role in social and economic life. His articles have appeared in journals including the American Political Science Review, Political Theory, and Modern Intellectual History. Before entering the academy, he worked as a political journalist covering debates related to U.S. foreign policy, and he continues to write for a general audience in publications like Dissent, The Nation, and The New Republic.
Luban received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago, and previously taught as a postdoctoral associate at Yale (2016-18), a junior research fellow at University College, Oxford (2018-22), and a lecturer at Chicago (2022-23).