Mark Lilla, born in Detroit in 1956, is Professor of Humanities at Columbia University and a regular essayist for The New York Review of Books and other publications worldwide.  He specializes in intellectual history, with a particular focus on Western political and religious thought.  Before moving to Columbia in 2007 Lilla taught in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and at New York University.  He lectures widely and has delivered the Weizmann Memorial Lecture in Israel, the Carlyle Lectures at Oxford University, and the The MacMillan Lectures on Religion, Politics, and Society at Yale University.

Lilla's books include the recently published The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction (2016), The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals and Politics (2nd ed., 2016), The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (2007), and G.B. Vico: The Making of an Anti-Modern (1994).  He also edited The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin (2001) with Ronald Dworkin and Robert B. Silvers.