Sir Ernest Barker (23 September 1874 – 17 February 1960) was an English political scientist who served as Principal of King's College London from 1920 to 1927.
Barker was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Balliol College, Oxford. He was a don at Oxford, and spent a brief time at the London School of Economics. He was Principal of King's College London from 1920 to 1927, and subsequently became Professor of Political Science in the University of Cambridge in 1928, being the first holder of the chair endowed by the Rockefeller Foundation. In June 1936 he was elected to serve on the Liberal Party Council. He was knighted in 1944. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1958. There is a memorial stone to him in St Botolph's Church, Cambridge.
On Barker see the special issue of Polis, vol. 23:2 (2006), Ernest Barker: A Centenary Tribute, ed. J. Stapleton, author of the definitive modern study of Barker, Englishness and the Study of Politics: The Social and Political Thought of Ernest Barker (Cambridge, 1994).