The Program on Law and Political Economy at Harvard Law School is hiring three research assistants to help develop a research agenda for the program’s Freedom from Want initiative. This year’s areas of focus will be housing, transportation, childcare, education, energy, and food. Each researcher will work up to 8 hours/week in close collaboration with Faculty Director Yochai Benkler and Executive Director R.H. Lossin to produce a “state of the field” report on two subjects by the end of November. The position is for the Fall 2026 semester with the possibility of further involvement in research and writing in Spring 2027. We are interested in applications from JDs and SJDs.
To apply, please send a letter describing your interest in Freedom from Want (see program description below), as well as your interest in researching two of the topics listed; a C.V.; and contact information for two references to: rlossin@law.harvard.edu by September 18th 2026. You must be enrolled at Harvard and living in the United States to apply.
Freedom from Want seeks enduring changes in the political and economic policies that determine access to basic resources such as healthy food, housing, healthcare, expansive lifelong education, water, air, energy, transportation, communications, child and elder care, freedom from physical violence, and the means for building a dignified life. We believe that the United States has the material and institutional resources necessary for every one of its inhabitants to live a life free from the threat of homelessness, hunger, preventable illness, toxic environments, debt, and state and interpersonal violence. Freedom from Want aims to assemble the intellectual resources necessary to realize real freedom through a combination of concrete and achievable policy proposals and political theory addressed to the structural inequities of the 21st century.
Freedom from Want can only result from the meaningful decommodification of basic needs and the creation of markets that are both embedded in social life and democratically controlled. This will require policymaking that takes struggle, conflict, politics, and coalition-building seriously. It will also require robust and imaginative theoretical contributions capable of shifting intellectual paradigms and introducing unorthodox ideas into the common political vocabulary.