- Anthony Appiah
- Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy
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Kwame Anthony Appiah has published widely in philosophy and in African and African American literary and cultural studies. In 1992, Oxford University Press published In My Father’s House, which deals, in part, with the role of African and African American intellectuals in shaping contemporary African cultural life. His major current work has to do with the relationships between philosophical ethics and other disciplines. In 1996, he published Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race with Amy Gutmann; in1997, the Dictionary of Global Culture, coedited with Henry Louis Gates Jr. Along with Gates, he has also edited the Encarta Africana cd-rom encyclopedia, published by Microsoft, which developed into Oxford University Press’s five- volume Africana encyclopedia in book form. In 2003, he coauthored Bu Me Bé: Proverbs of the Akan (of which his mother is the major author), an annotated edition of 7,500 proverbs inTwi, the language of Asante. He is also the author of three novels, of which the first, Avenging Angel, was largely set at Clare College, Cambridge, where he received his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. In 2004, Oxford University Press published his introduction to contemporary philosophy, Thinking It Through; in January2005, Princeton University Press published The Ethics of Identity; and Norton published Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers in 2006. This year, Harvard University Press published his Experiments in Ethics.
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- Charles R. Beitz
- Director of the University Center for Human Values
- Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics
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Professor Charles Beitz, the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics, has been named director of the University Center for Human Values, effective July 1, 2009. Professor Beitz joined the Princeton faculty in 2001. His philosophical and teaching interests focus on international political theory, democratic theory, the theory of human rights and legal theory. His new book, The Idea of Human Rights, will be published in August. He is also the author of Political Theory and International Relations and Political Equality: An Essay in Democratic Theory as well as articles on a variety of topics in political philosophy. His co-edited volumes include International Ethics, Law, Economics, and Philosophy and, most recently, Global Basic Rights. He is also the editor of the quarterly journal, Philosophy & Public Affairs. Professor Beitz has served on the University Center’s executive committee since 2001. Before coming to Princeton, Professor Beitz taught at Swarthmore College and Bowdoin College, where he was also Dean for Academic Affairs. He has received fellowship awards from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller and MacArthur Foundations, the American Council of Learned Societies and the American Council on Education and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor Beitz earned a bachelor's degree from Colgate University and a Ph.D. in Princeton's Program in Political Philosophy.
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- Sandra Bermann
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Professor of Comparative Literature
Chair, Department of Comparative Literature -
Sandra Bermann is Cotsen Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Comparative Literature. She currently serves as chair of the Department of Comparative Literature. In addition to articles and reviews in scholarly journals, she is the author of The Sonnet Over Time: Studies in the Sonnets of Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Baudelaire, and translator of Manzoni’s On the Historical Novel. Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation, coedited with Michael Wood, was published by Princeton University Press in 2005. Her current projects focus on lyric poetry, translation, the intersections between 20th-century historiography and literary theory, and new directions in the field of comparative literature. A recipient of Whiting and Fulbright Fellowships, and a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study and the Columbia University Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall in Paris, she recently finished a term as President of the American Comparative Literature Association (2007-09). At Princeton she was Master of Stevenson Hall, and founder with Michael Wood of the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication. She received her B.A. at Smith College and her M.A. and Ph.D. at Columbia University.
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- John M. Cooper
- Henry Putnam University Professor of Philosophy
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John Cooper is the author of Reason and Human Good in Aristotle, which was awarded the American Philosophical Association's Franklin Matchette Prize; and two collections of essays, Reason and Emotion: Essays on Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory (1999) and Knowledge, Nature, and the Good: Essays on Ancient Philosophy (2004). His work in ancient Greek philosophy spans the areas of metaphysics, moral psychology, philosophy of mind, ethics, and political theory. Cooper's papers are published in many collected editions and in scholarly journals such as Philosophical Review, Journal of Philosophy, and Phronesis. He is co-editor of Seneca: Moral and Political Essays, and his edition of Plato: Complete Works came out in 1997. He was President of the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division (1999-2000), and was Vice-Chair of the association's national Board of Officers (2001-02). He has held research fellowships of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the American Council of Learned Societies, and is a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge, Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Before coming to Princeton, Cooper held positions at Harvard University and the University of Pittsburgh. He received his A.B. degree from Harvard College, his B. Phil. from Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and his Ph.D. from Harvard University.
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- Christopher Eisgruber
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Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School
Provost of Princeton University -
Christopher Eisgruber became provost of Princeton University in July 2004. His research focuses on constitutional theory, the Supreme Court, religious freedom, and civil liberties. He is the author of The Next Justice: Repairing the Supreme Court Appointments Process (Princeton University Press, 2007), Religious Freedom and the Constitution (Harvard University Press, 2007) (coauthored with Lawrence G. Sager), and Constitutional Self-Government (Harvard University Press, 2001). In 2005, he coedited (with Andras Sajo) a volume of papers on universalism, human rights, and local justice titled Global Justice and the Bulwarks of Localism: Human Rights in Context (Brill, 2005). He has also published widely in leading law journals. Before coming to Princeton, Eisgruber taught for 10 years on the faculty of the New York University School of Law.
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- Elizabeth Harman
- Assistant Professor of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values
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Elizabeth Harman, Ph.D., MIT, 2003, has written papers on the ethics of abortion, the moral status of babies and animals, the non-identity problem, and the ethics of stem-cell research. Her current projects address the significance of animal death, whether some common practical reasoning is good reasoning, and blameworthiness in cases of wrong actions due to false moral beliefs. Her papers include "Creation Ethics: The Moral Status of Early Fetuses and the Ethics of Abortion" in Philosophy and Public Affairs; "The Potentiality Problem" in Philosophical Studies; "Can We Harm and Benefit in Creating?" in Philosophical Perspectives; "Sacred Mountains and Beloved Fetuses: Can Loving or Worshipping Something Give It Moral Status?" in Philosophical Studies; "How is the Ethics of Stem Cell Research Different from the Ethics of Abortion?" in Metaphilosophy; and "Harming as Causing Harm" in Harming Future Persons.
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- Melissa Lane
- Professor of Politics
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Melissa Lane joined the Politics department in 2009. Her main works include Method and Politics in Plato’s Statesman, Plato’s Progeny: How Plato and Socrates still captivate the modern mind, and a new ‘Introduction’ to the Penguin Classics volume of Plato’s Republic (2007 edition). Her research and teaching interests focus on ancient Greek political thought and its modern reception. She also works on a broad range of topics in the history of political thought and in normative theory and public ethics. She is a contributor to both The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought (of which she was also an Associate Editor) and The Cambridge History of Twentieth Century Political Thought. Before coming to Princeton, Professor Lane taught political thought in the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge, where she was a Fellow of King’s College Cambridge and Associate Director of the College’s Centre for History and Economics (now a joint Centre/Center with Harvard University).
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- Stephen Macedo
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Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics
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Stephen Macedo writes and teaches on political theory, ethics, public policy, and law, especially on topics related to liberalism, democracy and citizenship, diversity and civic education, religion and politics, the family and sexuality, global justice and governance, and immigration. He was director of the University Center for Human Values from 2001-July 1, 2009. As founding director of Princeton’s Program in Law and Public Affairs (1999-2001), he chaired the Princeton Project on Universal Jurisdiction, helped formulate the Princeton Principles on Universal Jurisdiction, and edited Universal Jurisdiction: International Courts and the Prosecution of Serious Crimes Under International Law ( U. of Pennsylvania, 2004). As vice president of the American Political Science Association he was first chair of its standing committee on Civic Education and Engagement and principal co-author of Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation, and What We Can Do About It (Brookings, 2005). His other books include Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy (Harvard U. Press, 2000); and Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism (Oxford U. Press, 1990). He is co-author and co-editor of American Constitutional Interpretation, 4th edition, with W. F. Murphy, J. E. Fleming, and S. A. Barber (Foundation Press, 2008).
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- Jan-Werner Mueller
- Assistant Professor
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Jan-Werner Mueller's research interests include the history of modern political thought, liberalism and its critics, nationalism, and the normative dimensions of European integration. He is the author of A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought (Yale University Press, 2003 ; German, French, Japanese, and Chinese translations) and Another Country: German Intellectuals, Unification and National Identity (Yale University Press, 2000). In addition, he has edited German Ideologies since 1945: Studies in the Political Thought and Culture of the Bonn Republic (Palgrave, 2003) and Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past (Cambridge UP, 2002). His book Constitutional Patriotism was published by Princeton University Press in 2007. He has been a fellow at the Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study; Harvard University; the Remarque Institute, New York University; and the Robert Schuman Centre, European University Institute, Florence. He has also taught as a visiting professor at the EHESS, Paris. He serves on the editorial boards of the European Journal of Political Theory, the Journal of Contemporary History, and Raison Publique: Revue Internationale de Philosophie Pratique et Appliquée.
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- Alan Patten
- Associate Professor of Politics
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Alan Patten is Associate Professor of Politics at Princeton University. A citizen of Canada and the United States, he obtained his B.A. from McGill University in 1988, and went on to do an M.A. at the University of Toronto and an M. Phil. and D. Phil. (1996) at the University of Oxford. He previously taught at McGill University and the University of Exeter, and spent the spring of 2004 teaching two graduate seminars at the State Islamic University of Indonesia in Jakarta.
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He is the author of Hegel’s Idea of Freedom (Oxford, 1999), which won the APSA First Book Prize in Political Theory and the C.B. Macpherson Prize awarded by the Canadian Political Science Association. He is the co-editor, with Will Kymlicka, of Language Rights and Political Theory (Oxford, 2003). His articles include “Political Theory and Language Policy”, Political Theory (2001), “Democratic Secession from a Multinational State”, Ethics (2002), “Liberal Neutrality and Language Policy” Philosophy & Public Affairs (2003), and "Humanist Roots of Linguistic Nationalism", History of Political Thought (2006). He is currently completing a book entitled Equal Recognition: The Moral Foundations of Minority Cultural Rights. He has a longer-term project underway on nationalism and the history of political thought.
Professor Patten currently serves as Chair of the Fund for Canadian Studies at Princeton. He is also Associate Chair, Department of Politics, and a member of the Executive Committee of the University Center for Human Values.
- Philip Pettit
- Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics
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Philip Pettit works in moral and political philosophy and on background issues in philosophical psychology and social ontology. His recent single-authored books include The Common Mind (Oxford University Press, 1996), Republicanism (Oxford University Press, 1997), A Theory of Freedom (Oxford University Press,2001), Rules, Reasons, and Norms (Oxford University Press, 2002) and Made with Words: Hobbes on Mind, Society, and Politics(Princeton University Press 2008). He is the coauthor of Economy of Esteem (Oxford University Press, 2004), with Geoffrey Brennan; and Mind, Morality, and Explanation (Oxford University Press, 2004), a selection of papers with Frank Jackson and Michael Smith. Common Minds: Themes from the Philosophy of Philip Pettit APPEARED in 2007 with Oxford University Press, edited by Michael Smith, Geoffrey Brennan, Robert Goodin, and Frank Jackson. Pettit leads the Project on Democracy and Human Values, which explores democratic principles and practices and fosters collaboration among normative and empirical researchers on fundamental questions of democratic governance.
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- Kim Lane Scheppele
- Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School
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Kim Lane Scheppele is Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and University Center for Human Values. She is also the director of the Program in Law and Public Affairs and faculty associate in politics. Before joining the Princeton faculty in 2005, she was the John J. O'Brien Professor of Comparative Law and Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she remains a faculty fellow in the law school. Her primary field is comparative constitutional law, and she has spent much time under three different grants from the National Science Foundation studying post-communist European countries undergoing constitutional transformation. She has published extensively on this topic in law reviews and social science journals. Her new book, The International State of Emergency, examines constitutional changes around the world in the wake of 9/11. Scheppele has held elective offices in the Law and Society Association as well as in the Sociology of Law and Theory sections of the American Sociological Association.
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- Peter Singer
- Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics (on leave Spring 2010)
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Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He first became well known internationally after the publication of Animal Liberation. His other books include: Democracy and Disobedience; Practical Ethics; The Expanding Circle; Marx; Hegel; The Reproduction Revolution (with Deane Wells), Should the Baby Live? (with Helga Kuhse), How Are We to Live?, Rethinking Life and Death; One World; Pushing Time Away; The President of Good and Evil; ,The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason) and The Life You Can Save. Singer holds his appointment at the center jointly with his appointment as Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, attached to the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics.
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- Michael Smith
- McCosh Professor of Philosophy
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Michael Smith rejoined the Department of Philosophy at Princeton University in 2004 after spending 10 years in the philosophy program at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. His primary research interests include ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of mind and action, political philosophy, and philosophy of law. He is the author of The Moral Problem (Blackwell, 1994), for which he was awarded the American Philosophical Association Book Prize 1994-96; Ethics and the A Priori: Selected Essays on Moral Psychology and Meta-Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2004); and coauthor of Mind, Morality and Explanation: Selected Collaborations (Oxford University Press, 2004), a collection of papers written in various combinations by Smith, Frank Jackson, and Philip Pettit. He is also the editor of Meta-Ethics (Dartmouth, 1995), and the co-editor of Reason and Value: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz (Oxford University Press, 2004) with Jay Wallace, Philip Pettit, and Samuel Scheffler; The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2005) with Frank Jackson; and Common Minds: Themes from the Philosophy of Philip Pettit (Oxford University Press, 2007) with Geoffrey Brennan, Robert Goodin, and Frank Jackson.
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