Overview
David E. Price represented North Carolina’s Fourth District, the Research Triangle region, in the
U.S. House of Representatives from 1987-94 and 1997-2022. He is a Polis Distinguished Fellow
at the Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, and a Professor Emeritus of Political
Science at Duke. He currently serves on the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board and the state
board of NC Community Colleges.
A member of the House Appropriations Committee, Price chaired the subcommittees on
Homeland Security (2007-10) and Transportation - Housing and Urban Development (2019-22).
He particularly focused on investments in mass transit and passenger rail and on enhanced
funding for housing for the elderly and people with disabilities, protecting and improving
manufactured housing communities, and the Choice Neighborhoods program.
Price also chaired the House Democracy Partnership (HDP), a bipartisan commission he
initiated to work peer-to-peer to support and strengthen representative institutions in
emerging democracies. He worked extensively with Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Moldova, N.
Macedonia, Kosovo, Mongolia, Indonesia, Kenya, Tunisia, and Peru, among other partner
countries.
Price grew up in Erwin, Tennessee, and was educated at Mars Hill College and the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he held a Morehead-Cain scholarship. He obtained a
Bachelor of Divinity degree and a Ph.D. in political science at Yale University. He taught four
years at Yale before coming to Duke in 1973, where he held a joint appointment in political
science and public policy. He is the author of four books and numerous articles on American
politics and institutions, political thought, ethics, and foreign affairs, including The
Congressional Experience, which he has taken through four editions.
Price lives in Chapel Hill. He and his late wife Lisa are the parents of two children, Karen and
Michael, and three grandchildren.