A world-renowned political philosopher and writer, Dr. Michael Walzer has been a permanent member of the faculty at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey since 1980. He joined the institute after teaching for 14 years at Harvard University, which followed four years, beginning in 1962, on the faculty of Princeton University.
A regular contributor to scholarly journals as well as to general circulation magazines, he has written on a wide range of topics, including just and unjust wars, nationalism, ethnicity, economic justice, the welfare state, radicalism, tolerance, political obligation, and the history of Jewish political thought. Outside of his academic work he acts as editor-in-chief of Dissent, and is a contributing editor to The New Republic. He is also on the editorial board of the academic journal Philosophy & Public Affairs.
To date he has written 27 books and has published more than 300 articles, essays, and book reviews. He is probably best known for his work on the morality of war, discussed in his classic Just and Unjust Wars (1977) and the more recent Arguing about War (2004).
He is a member of several philosophical organizations including the American Philosophical Society and also serves on the Board of Governors of The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Brandeis University from 1983-88.
Dr. Walzer received his bachelor’s degree from Brandeis in 1956 and spent the following year at Cambridge University on a Fulbright Fellowship. He earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1961.