After graduating from Yale with a B.A. in 1973 and a Ph.D. four years later, Bromwich became an instructor at
Princeton University, where he was promoted to Mellon Professor of English before returning to Yale in 1988. In 1995 he was appointed Housum Professor of English at Yale. In 2006 he became a
Sterling Professor. Bromwich is a fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has published widely on Romantic criticism and poetry, and on eighteenth-century politics and moral philosophy. His book
Politics by Other Means concerns the role of critical thinking and tradition in higher education, and defends the practice of liberal education against political encroachments from both Left and Right. In 2000 he edited a collection of writings by Edmund Burke,
On Empire, Liberty, and Reform: Speeches and Writings which departs from other collections of Burke's writings by foregrounding Burke's impeachment of Warren Hastings and his criticisms of the British empire in India. His essays and reviews have appeared in
The New Republic,
The New York Review of Books, the
London Review of Books,
The Times Literary Supplement, and many other U.S. and British journals. He is a frequent contributor of political blog posts on the
Huffington Post. Since 2017, he has served as a trustee of the
National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, NC. Bromwich's collection of essays
Skeptical Music was awarded the
PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay in 2002. ==Political views==