University of Colorado, Boulder
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2008
Ypsilanti, Michigan, United States of America
  •  47
    Global Feminist Ethics
    with Lynne S. Arnault, Bat-Ami Bar On, Alyssa R. Bernstein, Victoria Davion, Marilyn Fischer, Virginia Held, Sabrina Hom, Audra King, James L. Nelson, Serena Parekh, April Shaw, and Joan Tronto
    Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2007.
    This volume is fourth in the series of annuals created under the auspices of The Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory . The topics covered herein_from peacekeeping and terrorism, to sex trafficking and women's paid labor, to poverty and religious fundamentalism_are vital to women and to feminist movements throughout the world
  •  5
    Immigration Justice
    Edinburgh University Press. 2013.
    What moral standards ought nation-states abide by when selecting immigration policies? Peter Higgins argues that immigration policies can only be judged by considering the inequalities that are produced by the institutions - such as gender, race and class - that constitute our social world.Higgins challenges conventional positions on immigration justice, including the view that states have a right to choose whatever immigration policies they like, or that all immigration restrictions ought to be…Read more
  •  22
    Migration Justice and Legitimacy
    Res Publica 28 (3): 425-433. 2022.
    In order for a state to rightfully exercise self-determination by means of setting policies concerning migrants and migration, they must be legitimate, Gillian Brock argues in _Justice for People on the Move_. Legitimacy, in Brock’s view, requires that states satisfy three (jointly sufficient) conditions: they must respect their own citizens’ human rights; they must be a part of a legitimate state system; and they must adequately contribute to the maintenance of this state system. In her new boo…Read more
  •  14
    Covering and the moral duty to resist oppression
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 24 (7): 1068-1075. 2021.
  •  40
    Covering and the moral duty to resist oppression
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 24 (7): 1068-1075. 2021.
    Do LGBT+ persons have a moral duty of some form to resist heterosexist oppression by refusing to “cover” (i.e., “to ‘disattend,’ or tone down, their (despised) sexuality in an effort to fit into and be accepted by the mainstream” (Ghosh 2018, 273))? Writing in response to Kenji Yoshino (Yoshino 2002 and 2006), Cyril Ghosh argues that such a duty would itself be oppressive. In this reply to Ghosh’s new book, I wish to argue that while Ghosh demonstrates that Yoshino’s critique of covering suffers…Read more
  •  86
    Three Hypotheses for Explaining the So-Called Oppression of Men
    Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 5 (2). 2019.
    Are men oppressed as men? The evidence given in support of affirmative responses to this question usually consists in examples of harms, limitations, or requirements masculinity imposes on men: men are expected to pay on dates, men must be breadwinners for their families, men can be drafted for war, and so forth. This article explicates three hypotheses that account for the harms, limitations, and requirements masculinity imposes on men and, drawing on the work of Alison Jaggar, seeks to show th…Read more
  •  63
    The rights and duties of immigrants in liberal societies
    Philosophy Compass 13 (11). 2018.
    What legal rights and duties immigrants should have is among the most ferociously debated topics in the politics of liberal societies today. However, as this article will show, there is remarkably little disagreement of great magnitude among political theorists and philosophers of immigration on the rights and duties of resident immigrants (even in contrast to the closely related philosophical discussion of justice in immigrant admissions). Specifically, this article will survey philosophical po…Read more
  •  29
    A Feminist Approach to Immigrant Admissions
    Hypatia 32 (3): 506-522. 2017.
    Answers to the question of immigrant admissions have been debated extensively by political philosophers since the 1980s. A wide variety of normative approaches to the question have been taken, but very nearly zero have been expressly feminist. Generalizing from Alison Jaggar's articulation of a feminist methodological approach to the political morality of abortion, this article proposes a feminist methodological approach to immigrant admissions. This article does not defend a substantive view on…Read more
  •  8
    Book reviews (review)
    with Jonathan Weiler, Hilary Appel, and Richard Sobel
    Human Rights Review 7 (4): 114-121. 2006.
  •  572
    Sexual Disorientation: Moral implications of gender norms
    In Lisa Gurley, Claudia Leeb & Anna Aloisia Moser (eds.), Feminists Contest Politics and Philosophy, Pie - Peter Lang. 2005.
    This paper argues that participating exclusively or predominantly in heterosexual romantic or sexual relationships is prima facie morally impermissible. It holds that this conclusion follows from three premises: (1) gender norms are on-balance harmful; (2) conforming to harmful social norms is prima facie morally impermissible; and (3) participating exclusively or predominantly in heterosexual romantic or sexual relationships is a way of conforming to gender norms.
  •  14
    The Ethics of Immigration, by Joseph H. Carens (review)
    Teaching Philosophy 39 (3): 363-367. 2016.
  •  707
    The Ethics of Immigration and the Justice of Immigration Policies
    Public Affairs Quarterly 29 (2): 155-174. 2015.
    A large portion of normative philosophical thought on immigration seeks to address the question “What policies for admitting and excluding foreigners may states justly adopt?” This question places normative philosophical discussions of immigration within the boundaries of political philosophy, whose concern is the moral assessment of social institutions. Several recent contributions to normative philosophical thought on immigration propose to answer this question, but adopt methods of reasoning …Read more
  •  43
    This paper is addressed to those who hold that states’ immigration policies are subject to cosmopolitan principles of justice. I have a very limited goal in the paper, and that is to offer a condensed explication of a principle for determining whether states’ immigration policies are just. That principle is that just immigration policies may not avoidably harm disadvantaged social groups (whether domestic or foreign). This principle is inspired by the failure, among many extant cosmopolitan prop…Read more
  •  591
    What is Poverty?
    with Audra King and April Shaw
    In Rebecca Whisnant & Peggy DesAutels (eds.), Global Feminist Ethics: Feminist Ethics and Social Theory, Rowman & Littlefield. 2008.
    Invoking three desiderata (empirical adequacy, conceptual precision, and sensitivity to social positioning), this paper argues that poverty is best understood as the deprivation of certain human capabilities. It defends this way of conceiving of poverty against standard alternatives: lack of income, lack of resources, inequality, and social exclusion.
  •  160
    Immigration Justice
    Edinburgh University Press. 2013.
    By what moral standards must nation-states select immigration policies? A central contention of Immigration Justice is that the justice of an immigration policy can be ascertained only through consideration of the pervasive, systematic, and unjust inequalities engendered by the institutions that constitute our social world. Immigration policies affect people primarily as members of social groups demarcated from each other by members’ gender, race, and class. For this reason, this book argues tha…Read more
  •  23
    This paper is addressed to those who hold that states’ immigration policies are subject to cosmopolitan principles of justice. I have a very limited goal in the paper, and that is to offer a condensed explication of a principle for determining whether states’ immigration policies are just. That principle is that just immigration policies may not avoidably harm disadvantaged social groups. This principle is inspired by the failure, among many extant cosmopolitan proposals for regulating immigrati…Read more
  •  2567
    Open Borders and the Right to Immigration
    Human Rights Review 9 (4): 525-535. 2008.
    This paper argues that the relevant unit of analysis for assessing the justice of an immigration policy is the socially-situated individual (as opposed to the individual simpliciter or the nation-state, for example). This methodological principle is demonstrated indirectly by showing how some liberal, cosmopolitan defenses of "open borders" and the alleged right of immigration fail by their own standards, owing to the implicit adoption of an inappropriate unit of analysis.