•  10
    Can We Survive Sustainability?
    Ethics, Policy and Environment 20 (3): 255-258. 2017.
    In 1773, Patrick Henry wrote to his friend, John Alsop.I shall honor the Quakers for their noble efforts to abolish Slavery. It is equally calculated to promote moral a...
  •  85
    The Wørd: Fearless Speech and the Politics of Language
    In Aaron Allen Schiller (ed.), Stephen Colbert and Philosophy, Open Court Press. pp. 115-30. 2009.
    Does “The Colbert Report” promote democratic values in American political dialogue? If so, does it encourage substantive criticism of political orthodoxy? Or does it just encourage the politics of cynicism, like so many other cable news shows? We claim that Stephen Colbert's style of political satire promotes democratic values of free, open, and critical speech because it reflects an ethical commitment that evokes the earlier spirit of criticism embodied by the ancient Greek philosophical tradit…Read more
  •  41
    Theories of Human Nature (review)
    Teaching Philosophy 34 (4): 451-455. 2011.
  •  58
    Blaming the Kids: Children's Agency and Diminished Responsibility
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 31 (1): 77-90. 2013.
    Children are less blameworthy for their beliefs and actions because they are young. But the relationship between development and responsibility is complex. What exactly grounds the excuses we rightly give to young agents? This article presents three distinct arguments for children's diminished responsibility. Drawing on significant resources from developmental psychology, it rejects views which base the normative adult/child distinction on children's inability to participate in certain kinds of …Read more
  •  18
    What's Wrong With Undermatching?
    Journal of Philosophy of Education 48 (4): 646-664. 2014.
    ‘Undermatched’ is the name education researchers have given to the surprisingly large number of students who attend post-secondary institutions which are less selective than their academic credentials would permit, or who simply fail to even apply for college when they are qualified to do so. At first, this might seem like an obviously bad trend, especially as rates of undermatching are much higher among students from low-income backgrounds. This article argues, however, that individual cases of…Read more
  •  8
    Learning to Occupy Yourself
    with Scot Danforth
    Social Theory and Practice 42 (3): 636-654. 2016.
    This article begins with John Dewey’s initially puzzling suggestion that training students in what he calls the “occupations”—the practical labor skills of their society—is essential to their personal freedom. This suggestion may seem strange to modern ears, which tend not to associate occupational training with personal liberation. In the course of this article, however, we argue that the ideas motivating Dewey’s comments about occupations are an important feature of what we now call “educating…Read more