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Paul Starr

Professor of sociology and public affairs, and Stuart professor of communications and public affairs, Princeton University;

Co-editor, The American Prospect

Biographical Sketch

Educational and Professional Background.

Contact information

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Paul Starr is professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University and co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect. At Princeton he holds the Stuart Chair in Communications and Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School. He received the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction and Bancroft Prize in American History for The Social Transformation of American Medicine and the 2005 Goldsmith Book Prize for The Creation of the Media. His most recent book Freedom's Power, on the history and promise of liberalism, is now out in paperback.

Professor Starr has written extensively on American society, politics, and both domestic and foreign policy. In 1990, with Robert Kuttner and Robert Reich, he co-founded The American Prospect, a liberal magazine about politics, policy, and ideas. Published quarterly in its early years, the magazine now appears monthly in print as well as online.

A short book by Professor Starr, The Logic of Health-Care Reform (1992, reissued in a revised and expanded edition in 1994) laid out the case for a system of universal health insurance and managed competition. During 1993 he served as a senior advisor at the White House in the formulation of the Clinton health plan.

Sandra Starr, Paul Starr's first wife, died in 1998. Now married to Ann Baynes Coiro, he has four children and three step-children.

EDUCATION

  • BA, Columbia University (1970).
  • Ph.D., Sociology, Harvard University (1978).

FELLOWSHIPS, AWARDS, HONORARY DEGREES

  • Fellow in Law, Science and Medicine, Yale Law School, 1974-75.
  • Junior Fellow, Society of Fellows, Harvard University, 1975-78.
  • Fellow, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 1981-82.
  • C. Wright Mills Award of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, 1983.
  • Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction, 1984.
  • Bancroft Prize in American History, 1984.
  • James Hamilton Award, American College of Health Care Executives, 1984
  • Doctor of Humane Letters, State University of New York, 1986.
  • Honorary High School Diploma, Eastchester High School, 1985.
  • Goldsmith Book Prize, 2005.

PREVIOUS POSITIONS

  • Project Director, Center for Study of Responsive Law, 1971-72.
  • Assistant Professor of Sociology, Harvard University, 1978-83.
  • Associate Professor of Sociology, Harvard University, 1983-85.
  • Member, Institute for Advanced Study, 1984-85.
  • Adviser on health policy, via Department of Health and Human Services, to the White House, February 1, 1993-July 30, 1993
  • Director, Century Institute, 1999-2003

CONTACT INFORMATION

  • Department of Sociology, 124 Wallace Hall Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544
  • TEL: (609) 258-4533 (v); (609) 258-2180 (fax).

Last modified, October 19, 2008 
starr@princeton.edu