Professional: my research and teaching interests focus on the democratic values of inclusion and self-governance in legal studies and in applied ethics

In law, I am interested in how scholars appeal to judicial craftsmanship as a professional norm for explaining and justifying court opinions, and how that norm promotes inclusion and self-governance. In applied ethics, I promote the goals of inclusion and self-governance by engaging students in activities that put them in control of their own educations. In particular, I assign collaborative work and I throw my own philosophical hat into the ring during discussions so that all members of the class might be included in our collective Socratic projects.

In class assignments, students also evaluate one another's work so that they may learn philosophy by practicing philosophy. In other words, students practice critical reading and writing skills just as members of the faculty do--by reading and discussing one another's work. Perhaps most importantly, I propose this activity so that everyone in the class might be more effectively included in the robust dialogue which constitutes philosophy at its very best.

My own training in philosophy has often emphasized the critical engagement, inclusion and self-governance which I believe are at the heart of philosophy. I began this journey in college, where I majored in philosophy. After spending two years in college and then spending a junior year in France on a program run by Hamilton College, I spent one more year in Charlottesville and then I was graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A.

I then moved to the mid-west, and after two years in Ann Arbor I was graduated from the University of Michigan with an M.A. in philosophy. I then moved to Bloomington and was graduated from Indiana University with a Ph.D. in philosophy. Before coming to SEU, I taught ethics, biomedical ethics and philosophy of law at Southwestern University and a variety of philosophy classes at Holyoke Community College in western Massachusetts.