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26Justice and Egalitarian Relations, Christian Schemmel. Oxford University Press, 2021, 321 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 38 (3): 501-507. 2022.
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68The case for egalitarian consciousness raising in higher educationPhilosophical Studies 179 (9): 2921-2944. 2022.Many college teachers believe that teaching can promote justice. Meanwhile, many in the broader American public disparage college classrooms as spaces of left-wing partisanship. This paper engages with that charge of partisanship. Section 1 introduces the charge. Then, in Sect. 2, I consider what teaching for justice should aim to do. I argue that selective institutions of higher education impose positional costs on members of a generation who do not attend them, and that those positional costs …Read more
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38Upward Mobility and What ‘Strivers’ Get RightAnalysis 81 (2): 351-359. 2021.Jennifer Morton’s Moving Up without Losing Your Way: The Ethical Costs of Upward Mobility is a wonderful book.1 1 In the acknowledgements, Morton says that in order to write it, she needed to ‘unlearn’ her training to write like a philosopher. I’ve had some occasion to try to unlearn that training myself. Having found it quite difficult, I am in awe of Morton’s remarkable accomplishment. She is offering deep philosophical insights into a matter of urgent social concern, and she’s making those in…Read more
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82The Stereotype Threat Hypothesis: An Assessment from the Philosopher's Armchair, for the Philosopher's ClassroomHypatia 30 (2): 450-466. 2015.According to Stereotype Threat Hypothesis, fear of confirming gendered stereotypes causes women to experience anxiety in circumstances wherein their performance might potentially confirm those stereotypes, such as high-stakes testing scenarios in science, technology, engineering, and math courses. This anxiety causes women to underperform, which in turn causes them to withdraw from math-intensive disciplines. STH is thought by many to account for the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields, …Read more
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62Citizenship, reciprocity, and the gendered division of laborPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 16 (2): 174-209. 2017.Despite women’s increased labor force participation, household divisions of labor remain highly unequal. Properly implemented, gender egalitarian political interventions such as work time regulation, dependent care provisions, and family leave initiatives can induce families to share work more equally than they currently do. But do these interventions constitute legitimate uses of political power? In this article, I defend the political legitimacy of these interventions. Using the conception of …Read more
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83Redistributing education among the less advantaged: A problem for principles of justice?Social Philosophy and Policy 31 (1): 109-134. 2014.
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68Home Economics for Gender Justice? A Case for Gender-Differentiated Caregiving EducationEthical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (3): 551-565. 2017.Recent calls for reinstituting mandatory home economics education have emphasized its potential to advance gender egalitarian aims. The thought is that, because women’s disproportionate performance of caregiving and household labor is partially caused by gender socialization that better prepares women than men for such work, we can disrupt gender inegalitarian work distributions by preparing everyone for the sort of work in question. The curricula envisioned in these calls are gender-neutral, in…Read more
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127Fair Educational Opportunity and the Distribution of Natural Ability: Toward a Prioritarian Principle of Educational JusticeJournal of Philosophy of Education 46 (3): 472-491. 2012.In this article, I develop and defend a prioritarian principle of justice for the distribution of educational resources. I argue that this principle should be conceptualized as directing educators to confer a general benefit, where that benefit need not be mediated by improved academic outcomes. I go on to argue that it should employ a metric of all-things-considered flourishing over the course of the student's lifetime. Finally, I discuss the relationship between my proposed prioritarian princi…Read more
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87Can We Use Social Policy to Enhance Compliance with Moral Obligations to Animals?Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (3): 629-647. 2018.Those who wish to abolish or restrict the use of non-human animals in so-called factory farming and/or experimentation often argue that these animal use practices are incommensurate with animals’ moral status. If sound, these arguments would establish that, as a matter of ethics or justice, we should voluntarily abstain from the immoral animal use practices in question. But these arguments can’t and shouldn’t be taken to establish a related conclusion: that the moral status of animals justifies …Read more
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63Philosophy in Schools: Can Early Exposure Help Solve Philosophy's Gender Problem?Hypatia 31 (2): 275-292. 2016.In this article, I explore a new reason in favor of precollegiate philosophy: It could help narrow the persistent gender disparity within the discipline. I catalog some of the most widely endorsed explanations for the underrepresentation of women in philosophy and argue that, on each hypothesized explanation, precollegiate philosophy instruction could help improve our discipline's gender balance. Explanations I consider include stereotype threat, gendered philosophical intuitions, inhospitable d…Read more
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87Citizenship, reciprocity, and the gendered division of labor: A stability argument for gender egalitarian political interventionsPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 16 (2): 174-209. 2017.Despite women’s increased labor force participation, household divisions of labor remain highly unequal. Properly implemented, gender egalitarian political interventions such as work time regulation, dependent care provisions, and family leave initiatives can induce families to share work more equally than they currently do. But do these interventions constitute legitimate uses of political power? In this article, I defend the political legitimacy of these interventions. Using the conception of …Read more
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398Understanding the Context for Existing Research and Reform ProposalsIn Greg J. Duncan & Richard J. Murnane (eds.), Whither Opportunity?: Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances, Russell Sage. pp. 507--522. 2011.
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32Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of LaborOxford University Press. 2019.This volume defends a particular set of progressive political interventions on the basis of their being legitimate exercises of coercive political power, specifically focusing on the gendered division of labour, which is widely regarded as the predominant form of gender injustice.
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352Fetuses, Orphans, and a Famous ViolinistSocial Theory and Practice 43 (3): 637-665. 2017.In this paper, I urge feminists to re-center fetal moral status in their theorizing about abortion. I argue that fundamental feminist normative commitments are at odds with efforts to de-emphasize fetal moral status: The feminist commitment to ensuring care for dependents supports surprising conclusions with regard to the ethics of abortion, and the feminist commitment to politicizing the personal has surprising conclusions regarding the politics of abortion. But these feminist insights also sup…Read more
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103Restricting Justice: Political Interventions in the Home and in the MarketPhilosophy and Public Affairs 41 (4): 357-388. 2013.
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93Political liberalism and autonomy education: Are citizenship-based arguments enough?Philosophical Studies 175 (5): 1071-1093. 2018.Several philosophers of education argue that schooling should facilitate students’ development of autonomy. Such arguments fall into two main categories: Student-centered arguments support autonomy education to help enable students to lead good lives; Public-goods-centered arguments support autonomy education to develop students into good citizens. Critics challenge the legitimacy of autonomy education—of the state imposing a schooling curriculum aimed at making children autonomous. In this pape…Read more
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59Educational Justice: Closing Gaps or Paying Debts?Journal of Applied Philosophy 29 (3): 231-242. 2012.The question of our educational obligations to disadvantaged students has typically been conceptualized using the language of achievement gaps: how and to what extent should we ameliorate gaps between students in terms of their attainment of certain valuable outcomes that are correlated with education? Recently, some have argued that the language of achievement gaps is misconceived and problematic, and that we should instead conceptualize our obligations to students as an education debt that is …Read more
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Harvard UniversityAssociate Professor
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Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Value Theory |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |
Applied Ethics |