Bernard E. Harcourt, JD, PhD

Bernard E. Harcourt is a distinguished contemporary critical theorist, justice advocate, and prolific writer and editor. In his books, articles, and teaching, his scholarship focuses on social and critical theory with a particular interest in punishment and surveillance. Harcourt is the founding director of the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought and executive director of Columbia University’s Eric H. Holder Initiative for Civil and Political Rights. Harcourt is the author or editor of more than a dozen books. Critique & Praxis (2020) charts a vision for political action and social transformation; The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens (2018) examines how techniques of counterinsurgency warfare spread to U.S. domestic policing and policy; and Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age (2015) interrogates the crisis of democracy under mass surveillance regimes of “expository” power. Harcourt served as a law clerk for Judge Charles S. Haight Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and began his legal career representing death row inmates, working with Bryan Stevenson at what is now the Equal Justice Initiative, in Montgomery, Alabama. He continues to represent pro bono inmates sentenced to death and life imprisonment without parole.

The NSS lecture series is made possible by generous contributions from Con Edison.