Paul Starr

At the Burgtheater, Vienna, forum on journalism and democracy, 2010.

Professor of sociology and public affairs, and Stuart professor of communications and public affairs, Princeton University; co-founder and founding 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 Stuart Professor of communications and public affairs at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs. He also serves as founding co-editor of The American Prospect, a liberal magazine that he co-founded in 1990 with Robert Kuttner and Robert Reich.

Starr's work addresses a wide range of questions in politics, history, public policy, and social theory. His book, American Contradiction: Revolution and Revenge from the 1950s to Now, published October 14, 2025, is a new social and political history of contemporary America. His previous book, Entrenchment: Wealth, Power, and the Constitution of Democratic Societies (2019) is a comparative and historical analysis of resistance to change and the pursuit of irreversibility.

Starr has written three books about health care institutions and policies.

• The Social Transformation of American Medicine (1983; updated ed. 2017) won the Bancroft Prize (American History), C. Wright Mills Award (Sociology), and Pulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction).
• The Logic of Health Care Reform (1992) laid out the case for a system of universal health insurance provided through a choice of private plans in what are now called insurance exchanges.
• Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health-Care Reform (2011, revised ed. 2013) is an analysis of the history and philosophy of health-care reform.

Starr has also written extensively on media, the public, and liberalism. His 2004 book The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications received the Goldsmith Book Prize.

Freedom's Power (2007) is an account of both the philosophical and institutional development of liberalism from its classical to modern phases.

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, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences,Stanford University, 2014-15.
• 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.
• High School Diploma (hoonorary; didn't graduate originally), 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