Stephen Macedo is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2014, and the American Academy of Sciences and Letters since October 2024, he is also immediate past-President of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy.  He is author, with Princeton Professor Frances Lee, of In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us (Princeton University Press, 2025), a comprehensive examination of Covid-19 policy and discussion around it as a window onto our political dysfunction. Other books include, Just Married: Same-Sex Couples, Monogamy, and the Future of Marriage (2015); Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy (2000); Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism (1990); and 20 other co-authored, edited, or co-edited books.  As Vice President of the American Political Science Association, and the first chair of its Standing Committee on Civic Education and Engagement, he published Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation, and What We Can Do About It (Brookings Institute Press 2005), co-authored with Robert Putnam, Margaret Levi, William Galston, and others.

Current research concerns the pressures on social justice exerted by various forms of globalization, especially immigration, and the problems raised by social media companies and the dangers of government efforts to policy “misinformation.”

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Stephen Macedo writes and teaches on political theory, ethics, public policy, and law, especially on topics related to liberalism, democracy and citizenship, diversity and civic education, religion and politics, and the family and sexuality. 

From 2001-2009, he was Director of the University Center for Human Values. As founding director of Princeton's Program in Law and Public Affairs (1999-2001), he chaired the Princeton Project on Universal Jurisdiction, helped formulate the Princeton Principles on Universal Jurisdiction, and edited Universal Jurisdiction: International Courts and the Prosecution of Serious Crimes Under International Law (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).  

As vice president of the American Political Science Association he was first chair of its standing committee on Civic Education and Engagement and principal co-author of Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation, and What We Can Do About It (Brookings, 2005). His other books include Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy (Harvard U. Press, 2000); and Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism (Oxford U. Press, 1990). He is co-author and co-editor of American Constitutional Interpretation, with W. F. Murphy, J. E. Fleming, and S. A. Barber (Foundation Press, 6th edition 2018).