Ganesh Sitaraman to lead policy accelerator at Vanderbilt

Indian American professor of law plans “to cultivate, grow and spread innovative research and policy ideas”

Ganesh Sitaraman, an Indian American professor of law at Vanderbilt University will lead its newly created Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator for Political Economy and Regulation, a $6 million effort to advance research, education and ideas.

The Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator based in the Law School is part of Discovery Vanderbilt, a groundbreaking initiative to bolster innovative research and education at the private research university in Nashville, Tennessee, according to a press release.

Read: Vikrum Aiyer set to join Heirloom Carbon as public policy chief (November 14, 2022)

Sitaraman, New York Alumni Chancellor’s Chair and Professor of Law, brings extensive experience in politics and public policy and will collaborate with peers within Vanderbilt Law School and across the university, it said.

“I am honored to lead the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator,” he said. “We plan to cultivate, grow and spread innovative research and policy ideas—and at a rapid pace that aligns with the urgency of the challenges we face.”

“Discovery Vanderbilt provides the resources and support to empower cutting-edge research that can make significant impact locally and globally,” Provost C. Cybele Raver said.

“Ganesh is a dynamic, highly accomplished scholar in law, government and political thought; he’ll bring tremendous expertise in leading this innovative new effort to solve some of the most important policy challenges of our time.”

Sitaraman is the author or co-author of five books, including The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution, a 2017 New York Times Notable Book, and most recently Networks, Platforms & Utilities. Sitaraman serves on the Administrative Conference of the United States, the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee and the boards of The American Prospect and the American Constitution Society.

He was a senior adviser to Senator Elizabeth Warren during her presidential campaign and her senior counsel in the US Senate.

Sitaraman’s work at the nexus of ideas, politics and public policy has led to profiles in The New York Times and Politico. Sitaraman is a graduate of Harvard College, the University of Cambridge and Harvard Law School. He joined Vanderbilt in 2011.

In 2022, a committee of faculty from across the institution considered options for enhancing public policy at Vanderbilt, the release said.

VPA leverages Discovery Vanderbilt funding to extend Vanderbilt’s strengths in public policy—which includes Peabody College’s work on education policy, the College of Arts and Science’s leadership on civic and social science policy and Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s work on public health—to issues on political economy and regulation.

Read: Vanderbilt announces creation of the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator for Political Economy and Regulation (February 28, 2023)

The Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator’s first initiative is its Project on Networks, Platforms and Utilities, an effort to revive and reimagine regulation in the transportation, communications, energy, banking and technology sectors.

This work, already underway, has been led by Sitaraman and Professor Morgan Ricks, Herman O. Loewenstein Chair in Law.

Together, Sitaraman and Ricks recently published Networks, Platforms & Utilities, the first casebook in the field in a quarter century, co-authored with Shelley Welton (University of Pennsylvania) and Lev Menand (Columbia).