Gopal Balakrishnan did his PhD in modern European intellectual history at UCLA. He was a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute (2000) and a Harper Schmidt Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago (2001-2005). While working towards his degree he co-edited a collection of essays with Benedict Anderson, entitled Mapping the Nation (1995). Balakrishnan subsequently joined the board of the New Left Review and has been a regular contributor of this journal since then. He is the author of The Enemy (2000), a comprehensive, critical reconstruction and contextualization of the entire oeuvre of Carl Schmitt, Debating Empire (2003), Antagonistics (2008) and is close to completing a two volume study on the writings of Marx from his dissertation on Greek philosophy to Capital. Balakrishnan teaches seminars in classical political thought, philosophy from Plato to Heidegger, history, historical sociology, Marxism and critical theory.