Darren Yau joined the doctoral program in Religion, Ethics, and Politics in Princeton's Religion Department in 2019. His research focuses on how religious commitments shape and are shaped by debates in political theory, especially as formulated by American pragmatists, Social Gospel reformers, and Black political theorists of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. His dissertation uses Martin Luther King Jr.’s political philosophy of non-violence to explore the grounds, limits, and objections to non-violent direct action in democratic social movements under unjust background conditions. His additional projects concern Marxist accounts of racism and religion, the role of religious institutions in distributive justice, pacifist arguments about global justice, and other philosophical questions that arise from early-to-mid-twentieth century debates about social reform. 

Darren’s research has been supported by the Center for the Study of Culture, Society, and Religion, the Department of African American Studies, and the Effron Center for the Study of America. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Wheaton College.