Professor Desmond King
Andrew W Mellon Professor of American Government, Department of Politics and International Relations
Professor Desmond King FBA, MRIA, FRHistS, MAE is one of the world's leading scholars of US government and politics.
About
Professor Desmond King is one of the world’s leading scholars of US government and politics, holding an endowed Chair in US Politics at the University of Oxford as well as being a Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College and Emeritus Fellow at St John’s College, Oxford.
Professor King is the author of 13 books, nine coedited books and numerous articles and chapters, and is a frequent op-ed contributor to media such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and Financial Times.
He is an elected fellow of the Royal Irish Academy, the American Philosophical Society, the British Academy, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Expertise
All aspects of US politics and government including the following:
- The presidency
- Race and civil rights / Black politics
- Elections
- Foreign policy
- Political parties and leadership
- Supreme Court
- Congress
Selected publications
- Governing by Decree: The Trump Presidency and the Decline of 'Legislating Together' (2026)
- “Making sense of American Politics in the Era of Trump” in America at 250: At Home and Abroad (2026)
- The Changing Character of the American Right (2 vols, 2025)
- America’s New Racial Battle Lines: Protect or Repair (2024)
- American Political Violence (Leonard Schapiro Lecture 2023)
- Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic: The Deep State and the Unitary Executive (revised and expanded edition, 2022)
- Racial Reparations against White Protectionism: America's New Racial Politics (2021)
- COVID-19: A Crisis of Borders (2021)
- The Racialized Pandemic: Wave One of COVID-19 and the Reproduction of Global North Inequalities (2021)
- Illiberalism (2021)
- “The Latter-Day General Grant”: Forceful Federal Power and Civil Rights (2020)
- Racial Pay Parity in the Public Sector: The Overlooked Role of Employee Mobilization (2020)
- White Protectionism in America (2020)
- Reconfiguring European States in Crisis (2017)
- Fed Power: How Finance Wins (2016)
Media experience
Professor Desmond King is a frequent op-ed contributor to media such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and Financial Times.