Emma Saunders-Hastings

Emma Saunders-Hastings is a political theorist whose research focuses on inequality, subordination, and private power. She is a Harper Fellow in the Society of Fellows and Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences Division at the University of Chicago. She holds a PhD from the Department of Government at Harvard University and an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Cambridge. In 2014-15, she was a postdoctoral scholar at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. Her broader research interests include modern and contemporary political theory, democratic theory, distributive justice, and feminist theories. Her book project (“Private Virtues, Public Vices: Governing Philanthropy”) links philanthropy to normative concerns about paternalism and unequal political influence and asks what kinds of public regulation of philanthropy are appropriate. She has also written about philanthropy for a general audience in the Boston Review and at histphil.org.