Wendy L. Brown (born November 28, 1955) is the Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley where she is also affiliated with the Department of Rhetoric, and where she is a core faculty member in the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory. She has made major and far-reaching contributions to modern political theory, drawing on the work of Marx and Foucault to elaborate a distinctive theory of modern power and political subject formation. Her work on the divergent rationalities of neo-liberalism and neo-conservativism as well as her analysis of neo-liberalism in relation to the contemporary threats to public education have established her as a significant public intellectual.