Hari Ramesh

Hari Ramesh is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University. He is a political theorist with research and teaching interests in democratic theory, histories and theories of social oppression, the intersections of South Asian, Afro-modern, and American political thought, and the relationship between empirical social science and political theory.

His current book project – tentatively titled Directed Association: Social Oppression, State Action, and the Pursuit of Radical Democracy (under contract with Harvard University Press) – draws insights from John Dewey, B.R. Ambedkar, Brown v. Board of Education, W.E.B. Du Bois, and contemporary democratic theory in order to offer an original account of the compatibility of coercive state action with a radical vision of democracy. Specifically, the book puts forward the idea of directed association – a conceptual and political strategy whereby socially oppressed groups can utilize the coercive instruments of the state in order to create the conditions for democracy understood not just as a form of government but as ‘associated life.’

Hari’s peer-reviewed research has appeared in Political Theory, Modern Intellectual History, and History of the Present. His public writing has been published in Boston Review and Dissent. He earned a BA in Political Science and English at Williams College and a PhD in Political Science at Yale University.