I am an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Baruch College, CUNY. I specialize in political philosophy, the ethics of emerging technologies, and political epistemology. My research investigates ways to develop mutual respect and understanding across the deep moral and political disagreements that characterize contemporary society. I also work on broader ethical and political challenges posed by emerging technologies. My articles have appeared in The Journal of Political Philosophy, Law and Philosophy, New Media & Society, and IEEE: Security and Privacy. I am also co-editing a new collection of essays, Political Epistemology, forthcoming with Oxford University Press.
Prior to joining Baruch College, I served as Senior Ethicist and Assistant Research Professor at Georgetown University’s Ethics Lab, a program of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. At Ethics Lab, I developed new translational ethics methods to empower both students and experts to address the urgent issues of our time. Our team collaborated with a wide variety of partners beyond the academy, from public impact projects to policy teams seeking practical progress on complex ethical issues. We also developed new techniques for integrating ethics into courses across the university, from computer science to international policy and foreign service.
I received my PhD in Philosophy from Vanderbilt University under the supervision of Marilyn Friedman, Rob Talisse, and Larry May.
New Book:
Political Epistemology (Oxford University Press, 2021) brings together leading philosophers to explore ways in which the analytic and conceptual tools of epistemology bear on political philosophy, and vice versa. It is organized around three broad themes: truth and knowledge in politics; epistemic problems for democracy; and disagreement and polarization. The contributors provide new and rich insights on topics such as: propaganda, fake news, weaponized skepticism, belief polarization, political disagreement, the epistemic value of democracy, voter ignorance, irrationality in politics, and identity politics.
Recent and Upcoming Academic Talks:
Algorithmic Personalization and Political Understanding (PPE Conference, 10/21; UCL Legal & Political Theory Colloquium, 11/21)
Author Meets Critics: Blain Neufeld’s Public Reason and Political Autonomy: Realizing the Ideal of a Civic People, Canadian Philosophical Association, 6/21)
The Epistemology of Rawlsian Disagreement (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee via zoom, 11/20)
Translational Ethics in Action (The Oxford Character Project via zoom, 10/20)
Political Disagreement on Social Media (Amsterdam, 12/19; New Orleans 3/20; Edinburgh 7/20; Philadelphia 7/20) [July 2020 talks cancelled due to covid-19]
Public Philosophy Talks
The Global Leadership Challenge, “Designing for Ethical Impact,” December 2020
Responsible Data Summit, Speaker, “Data Rights and Justice,” July 2020
CNA National Security Seminar, Speaker, “AI and Ethics,” June 2020
Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute: Tech Summit 2.0, Expert Panelist “Ethics of the Future: AI, Transhumanism and the Age of Super-Intelligence,” December 2019
Mozfest: Healthy AI, organized by the Mozilla Foundation October 2019: “Hidden Values: Embedded Values in Algorithm Design” & Teaching Demo on Teaching Ethics to Computer Scientists for the Responsible CS Challenge
POLITICO: AI SUMMIT, September 2018: Expert Panelist on AI & Ethics (Video here in AI Summit 8)