Paul is Professor of Comparative Literature and Chair of Liberal Studies at the New School for Social Research in New York. He edits the book series Square One: First Order Questions in the Humanities for Stanford University Press and is the author of several books. Most recently, Love as Human Freedom sees love as a practice that changes over time through which new social realities are brought into being. Love brings about, and helps us to explain, immense social-historical shifts—from the rise of feminism to the struggles for abortion rights and birth control and the erosion of a gender-based division of labor. He is currently at work on a book that interrogates the way in which ethical life takes shape in contemporary aesthetic forms.

At THE NEW INSTITUTE, Paul is involved in several programs in the Academic Year 2024/25.