“I Am A Man: Memphis Sanitation Strike 1968,” Exhibit at the National Civil Rights Museum. Photo: Alex Richardson
I think and write about moral and civic learning, and more generally at the intersections of political philosophy and education.
As of late, my work has focused on the educational practice of fostering deliberative and discursive skills which are crucial to democratic citizenship. I’m currently working on several ongoing projects in this area. My research in academic philosophy has focused on the liberal ideal of civility and the role it plays in non-ideal political theory. My doctoral dissertation (2021) advanced a reconceptualization of the ideal of civility as it applies to the politics of resisting oppression and other forms of injustice.
Public Writing
JOURNAL ARTICLE (2024)
Building Bridges for Dialogue: A Multi-Faceted Approach to Deliberative Moral and Civic Education for All
In Public Philosophy Journal 6:1 with Delaney (Thull) Verjinksi, 2024
We outline a vision for NHSEBBridge—a novel strategy for moral and civic education for implementation with students in grades 9-12. NHSEBBridge operates as an extension of the award-winning National High School Ethics Bowl program. In this paper, we focus on the challenges involved with extending such programming to students from underserved schools and communities who are often left out. In our own work, this has focused on schools in the rural American South. We find that the unique challenges faced by schools we work with create similarly unique opportunities for a deliberative brand of educational programming to thrive. Ultimately, we propose NHSEBBridge as a model for educators at the collegiate and high school levels to expand access to philosophy programs which focus on building students’ deliberative skills.
OP-ED (2022)
High School Ethics Bowl Students’ Lessons for All
In EducationNC, with Michael Vazquez, 2022
In this brief op-ed, we worry, apropos of a scorched-earth election season, that Americans have forgotten how to talk to each other. To learn and relearn these skills, particularly in contexts of disagreement, we suggest looking to High School Ethics Bowl students around the country for efficient modeling of precisely the kinds of deliberative behaviors that are missing from the nation’s politics in recent months and years.
BOOK CHAPTER (2022)
Meeting the Challenge: The Future of Ethics Bowl
In Roberta Israeloff and Karen Mizell (eds.), The Ethics Bowl Way: Answering Questions, Questioning Answers, and Creating Ethical Communities. Rowman & Littlefield, 2022.
The Ethics Bowl discussion format and Ethics Bowl programs across the United States (and increasingly, across the world) present and model a better way to argue for the tens of thousands of participants they serve. In so doing, the activity inculcates individual habits of mind and norms of cooperation and deliberation which are crucial to a healthily functioning democracy (Ladenson 2001, 2012; Gutmann and Thompson 1996; Dworkin 2006). In the wake of recent social and political upheaval, I argue that these habits of mind are more crucial than ever, and warrant an expansion of the Ethics Bowl’s reach and impact. This chapter proposes important new tools and approaches in pursuit of such expansion, of equal comprehensive access for participants, and for adaptation of the format for new audiences and use cases.
Research Projects
Photo: Getty Images
DOCTORAL Dissertation (2021)
Oppression, Civility, and the Politics of Resistance
Committee: Jon Garthoff (Chair), David Reidy, Lisi Schoenbach, Georgi Gardiner
My dissertation critically engages with the project of resisting political oppression, inquiring after its forms and justification. In Chapter 1, I define and clarify the nature of oppression, with a particular focus on racial oppression at the site of criminal justice and policing in the United States. Chapters 2 and 3 criticize two common frameworks for understanding political resistance: civil disobedience and political violence. Given the shortcomings of these frameworks, I advance a novel if intuitive framework for understanding and evaluating resistance in Chapter 4. There, I argue that our understanding benefits from (A) a commitment to political constructiveness, which I think captures what is valuable about the liberal virtue of civility, and (B) a commitment to transformational societal change, which I think captures a central thread in more total or violent responses to oppression. To conclude, I recommend two initiatives to approach the problem of oppression from both ends, as it were: (A) what I call constructive political resistance, drawing on the framework I develop in Chapter 4, and (B) deliberative civic education programs which emphasize the modeling and practice of substantive equality and liberal reciprocity.
Photo: Alex Richardson
JOURNAL Article (2018)
Toward a Capability-Based Account of Intergenerational Justice
Ethic@: An International Journal for Moral Philosophy 17 (3): 363-388, 2018
In this paper, I draw on the capabilities approach to social justice and human development as advanced, among others, by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, and seek to provide some theoretical resources for better understanding our obligations to future persons. It is my hope that the capabilities approach, properly applied, can give us a novel way of understanding our responsibilities toward future generations in a time where such an understanding is both unfortunately lacking and increasingly needed.