George Kateb

{{short description|American writer and professor}} {{Infobox philosopher | honorific_prefix = | name = George Kateb | native_name =  | honorific_suffix = | image =  | image_size = | alt = | caption = | other_names = | birth_name =  | birth_date = {{birth date and age|1931|02|27}} | birth_place = | death_date =  | death_place = | death_cause = | occupation = | notable_works =  | awards = | signature = | signature_size = | signature_alt = | era = | region = | school_tradition = | institutions = Princeton University<br>Amherst College | thesis_title =  | thesis_url =  | thesis_year =  | doctoral_advisor =  | academic_advisors = | doctoral_students = | notable_students = | language = | main_interests = | notable_ideas = | influences =  | influenced =  | website =  |education=Columbia University (AB, MA, PhD)}} '''George Anthony Kateb''' is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics, Emeritus, at Princeton University.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Krupp |first1=Tyler |last2=Stuart |first2=Rachel |title=An Interview With George Kateb |url=https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/an-interview-with-george-kateb/ |access-date=15 April 2022 |work=The New York Times |date=28 November 2011}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2025-03-07 |title=George Anthony Kateb {{!}} American Academy of Arts and Sciences |url=https://www.amacad.org/person/george-anthony-kateb |access-date=2025-04-07 |website=www.amacad.org |language=en}}</ref>

== Life == Kateb earned his A.B., A.M. and Ph.D. at Columbia University and was a Junior Fellow at Harvard University.<ref>{{Cite web |title=George Kateb {{!}} Friends of the Library Oral Histories {{!}} Amherst College |url=https://www.amherst.edu/library/archives/holdings/friends-of-the-library-oral-histories/george-kateb |access-date=2023-12-14 |website=www.amherst.edu}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2017-10-17 |title=Thank you to our FY17 CCT donors |url=https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/issue/fall17/article/thank-you-our-fy17-cct-donors |access-date=2023-12-14 |website=Columbia College Today |language=en}}</ref> His PhD dissertation, defended in 1956, was titled "The Political and Social Thought of Simone Weil (1909-1943)."<ref>{{Cite journal |date=1956 |title=Doctoral Dissertations in Political Science |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1951560 |journal=The American Political Science Review |volume=50 |issue=3 |pages=807–844 |issn=0003-0554}}</ref> He then taught at Amherst College for thirty years before joining the faculty at Princeton in 1987.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title=George Kateb {{!}} Princeton Politics |url=https://politics.princeton.edu/people/george-kateb |access-date=2025-04-07 |website=politics.princeton.edu}}</ref> As a member of the executive committee of the University Center for Human Values he was involved with the search committee that appointed the Australian philosopher Peter Singer to a chair in bioethics at Princeton in 1999.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Human Dignity — Harvard University Press |url=https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674284173 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240715025509/https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674284173 |archive-date=2024-07-15 |access-date=2025-04-07 |website=Harvard University Press |language=en |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Notebook - January 27, 1999 |url=https://www.princeton.edu/~paw/archive_old/PAW98-99/08-0127/0127notx.html |access-date=2025-04-07 |website=www.princeton.edu}}</ref>

Kateb is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has also served as vice president of the American Society of Political and Legal Philosophy and president of the New England Political Science Association. He has also served as a member of the editorial board or consulting editor of the ''Journal of the History of Ideas'', the Library of America, Alternative Futures, the ''American Political Science Review'', ''Political Theory'', and ''Raritan Quarterly Review''. He is a recipient of the Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities from Princeton. He retired from teaching in 2002.<ref name=":0" />

== Research == According to Leo Marx, "Kateb's main purpose is to reveal the subtlety and profundity of the American ideal of democratic individuality."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Marx |first=Leo |date=1990 |title=George Kateb's Ahistorical Emersonianism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/191545?seq=5 |journal=Political Theory |volume=18 |issue=4 |pages=595–600 |issn=0090-5917}}</ref>

==Bibliography== * ''Utopia and Its Enemies'' (1963) * ''Political Theory: Its Nature and Uses'' (1968) * ''Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil'' (1984) * ''The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture'' (1992) * ''Emerson and Self-Reliance'' (1994) * ''Patriotism and Other Mistakes'' (2006) * ''Human Dignity'' (2011)

==References== {{Reflist}}

==External links== * [https://www.princeton.edu/prok/issues/1-2/forum.xml Princeton Report On Knowledge Forum with Kateb] * [http://www.nybooks.com/authors/6827 Kateb's contributions to the New York Review of Books] * [https://www.princeton.edu/politics/people/display_person.xml?netid=kateb&display=All Kateb's Princeton faculty page]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kateb, George}} Category:1931 births Category:Living people Category:Amherst College faculty Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:American political philosophers Category:American political writers Category:Harvard Fellows Category:Princeton University faculty Category:Columbia College, Columbia University alumni Category:Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni