Jason Brennan (Ph.D., 2007, University of Arizona) is the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. He specializes in politics, philosophy, and economics. He is the editor-in-chief of Philosophy & Public Affairs and an associate editor of Social Philosophy and Policy. He recently completed a $2.1 million project on "Markets, Social Entrepreneurship, and Effective Altruism," funded by the Templeton Foundation. In 2024, he was named one of the best undergraduate business professors by Poets and Quants. In 2022, Brennan received the Provost's Innovation in Teaching Award for his development of the Ethics Project, a student-directed experiential learning project.
He is the author of 20 books: Glass Houses: Choosing Grace in a Judgmental World (Oxford University Press, 2025); Debating Capitalism: Social Democracy or Market Liberalism? (Oxford University Press, 2025), with Richard Arneson; Debating Libertarianism (Oxford University Press, 2025), with Samuel Freeman; Questioning Beneficence (Routledge, 2024), with Sam Arnold, Richard Yetter Chappell, and Ryan Davis; Democracy: A Guided Tour (Oxford University Press, 2023), Debating Democracy, with Hélène Landemore (Oxford University Press, 2021), Business Ethics for Better Behavior, with William English, John Hasnas, and Peter Jaworski (Oxford University Press, 2021), Why It's OK to Want to Be Rich (Routledge Press 2020), Good Work if You Can Get It (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020); Injustice for All: America's Dysfunctional Criminal Justice System and How to Fix It, with Christopher Surprenant (Routledge, 2019); Cracks in the Ivory Tower: The Moral Mess of Higher Education, with Phil Magness (Oxford University Press, 2019); When All Else Fails: Resistance, Violence, and State Injustice (Princeton University Press, 2018); In Defense of Openness: Global Justice as Global Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2018), with Bas van der Vossen; Against Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2016); Markets without Limits, with Peter Jaworski (Routledge Press, 2016); Compulsory Voting: For and Against, with Lisa Hill (Cambridge University Press, 2014); Why Not Capitalism? (Routledge Press, 2014); Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2012); The Ethics of Voting (Princeton University Press, 2011); and, with David Schmidtz, A Brief History of Liberty (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). He is co-editor, along with David Schmidtz and Bas Van der Vossen, of the Routledge Handbook of Libertarianism (Routledge, 2017).
His books have been translated 35 times (including forthcoming translations), into Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Turkish, German, Italian, Korean, Greek, Polish, Persian, Mongolian, Georgian, Ukrainian, Czech, and Swedish. Gegen Demokratie (Ullstein, 2017), the German translation of Against Democracy, was a Der Spiegel bestseller.
He has published over 60 articles in peer-reviewed journals, over 30 peer-reviewed chapters in edited anthologies, and over 50 articles for popular and trade audiences.
Academic Appointment(s)
- Primary
- Professor, McDonough School of Business