My research falls into four interrelated streams: moral/political repair; the social nature of persons and the attendant responsibilities of moral communities; issues having to do with speech and conflict; and connections between our inner lives and oppressive ideologies.
First, I work in moral/political repair and take as the foundational question of all my research how someone can make it better after they have acted wrongly. For instance, in “Forgiveness and Reconciliation” I argue that the two concepts should not be conflated and that while someone might have reason to forgive they might well be justified in choosing not to reconcile. That insight applies to communities or social groups as well, rendering a more nuanced (and helpful) array of options than public conversations about reconciliation often allow. In “Weapon and Shield: Apologies and the Duty to be Vulnerable” (co-authored with Katie Stockdale and Audrey Yap) we explore the ways that apologies can be used simultaneously to protect wrongdoers from further moral criticism and attack the person to whom they are apologizing, and that both are exacerbated by features of one’s social location like gender and race.
Second, I focus on the social nature of persons and the role that someone’s community plays in helping them to become who they are. In Not Giving Up on People: A Feminist Case for Prison Abolition (co-authored with Audrey Yap) we argue that social institutions should be arranged so as to create the opportunity for wrongdoers to make up for their wrongs rather than writing them off as lost causes (as contemporary criminal justice systems in the United States and Canada tend to do). In “Inductive Reasoning Involving Social Kinds” (co-authored with Tyler Hildebrand) we explore some of the ways that reasoning inductively about social phenomena – and race in particular – is more complicated (and fraught) than it might initially seem. In particular, we argue that affirmative action policies and racial profiling policies can be broken apart so that one can support the former without supporting the latter, and that our account can be applied more generally to other policies having to do with social kinds.
Third, in my work on speech and conflict, I have focused on the ways in which someone’s social identity affects what they say or how they are affected by what others say, rendering moral judgements and policy choices about how and when to restrict speech or to argue with others more complicated than things might initially appear. For instance, in “The Limits of the Rights to Free Thought and Expression” I explore what I call “exclusionary harms” and argue that wholly unconstrained speech undermines the values that help to justify it. In “Only Human (In the Age of Social Media)” (co-authored with Shannon Dea) we argue that far from being the idealized “public square” in which sunlight is the best disinfectant, speech on social media can be especially pernicious. In “Love and Resistance: Moral Solidarity in the Face of Perceptual Failure,” I argue that relationships of love and care generate the obligation to not give up on our loved ones who have problematic inner lives and that part of how we satisfy that obligation is by creating what I call “affective friction” by expressing anger with them (and thereby holding them to account).
Fourth, I have focused on the ways that people’s inner lives are born from and contribute to unjust ideologies. In “Fear and the Maintenance of Ideology” I argue that fear is made concrete in social institutions, which trains individual people who populate them in one identity or another, and which then perpetuate and maintain those ideologies. I then argue that resisting fear (and helping others to do so) is one important method by which we can work for justice. In “Betrayed Expectations: Misdirected Anger and the Preservation of Ideology” (coauthored with Audrey Yap) we argue that white supremacist and sexist ideologies train people to expect and feel entitled to certain types of social goods, and that when they are denied those goods, their anger is misdirected towards oppressed social groups rather than focusing on the ideologies themselves, where it belongs. In other work I explore empathy as a corrective to epistemic injustice and silencing as a form of violence that is especially likely to apply to oppressed groups.
Monograph
Not Giving Up on People: A Feminist Case for Prison Abolition
coauthored with Audrey Yap, Rowman & Littlefield 2024.
In this book Audrey Yap and I engage theoretical arguments about personhood and moral repair into conversation with the work of activists and the experiences of incarcerated people to make the case that prisons ought to be abolished. We argue that contemporary carceral systems in the United States and Canada fail to treat people as genuine moral agents in ways that also fail victims and their larger communities. Such carceral systems are a form of what we call “institutionalized moral abandonment”. Instead, we argue that we should create communities of moral solidarity which open up space for wrongdoers to make up for their wrongs.
As part of this argument, we address one of the paradigm cases of wrongdoing often used to justify carceral systems: rape. Carceral systems that treat perpetrators of sexual violence as irredeemable monsters both obscure the reality of sexual violence and are harmful to everyone involved.
As an alternative to carceral systems, we argue for an orientation towards justice that is grounded in moral repair. This incorporates elements of restorative justice, mutual aid, and harm reduction. Instead of advocating for one specific and universal approach, we argue for multigenerational collective action that aims to build resilient communities that support the well-being of everyone.
Chapter 3 - Sexual Violence and Carceral Logic is open access and can be downloaded via the link.
Chapter 7 - Not Giving Up is open access and can be downloaded via the link.
Articles and Book Chapters
Forthcoming in The Moral Psychology of Fear, edited by Ami Harbin, Bloomsbury.
This paper explores some of the ways that fear can be both a manifestation of and major contributor to oppression. It argues for a pluralistic account of the reasons that justify feeling fear or working to let go of fear and provides a framework to grapple fruitfully with the question of when someone should work to let go of fear and work to avoid contributing to the fear of others. Part 1 argues that emotions are an appropriate target of moral evaluation; we are often not only responsible for our outwardly observable actions, but also for our emotional lives. It then details six different criteria by which we can engage in such evaluation. Part 2 evaluates fear in particular, in light of its relationship to oppressive ideologies and social structures. Part 3 explores some of the ways that people ought to respond to oppressive fear, in light of the relation they bear to it.
The Art of Teaching Philosophy: Reflective Values and Concrete Practices, edited by Brynn Welch, Bloomsbury, 2024.
Paolo Freire argued that trust is essential to what he called the “problem-posing” model of education. This paper builds on that insight and explores different ways that trust plays out in the classroom, focusing on three different types. The first type of trust is from teacher to student – trusting that students will show up prepared and ready to do the work together. The second type of trust is from student to teacher – trusting that the method and design of the course (from the assignment structure to story arc of the topics and texts) will be coherent and worthwhile. The final type of trust is that which emerges holistically, in which what Freire called the teacher-student and student-teachers build a trustful epistemic community together.
Only Human (In the Age of Social Media)
coauthored with Shannon Dea
Forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook of Non-Ideal Theory, edited by Hilkje C. Hänel and Johanna Müller, Routledge.
This chapter argues that for human, technological, and human-technological reasons, disagreement, critique, and counterspeech on social media fall squarely into the province of non-ideal theory. It concludes by suggesting a modest but challenging disposition that can help us when we are torn between opposing oppression and contributing to a flame war.
Inductive Reasoning Involving Social Kinds
coauthored with Tyler Hildebrand
Forthcoming in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association
Most social policies cannot be defended without making inductive inferences. For example, consider certain arguments for racial profiling and affirmative action, respectively. They begin with statistics about crime or socioeconomic indicators. Next, there is an inductive step in which the statistic is projected from the past to the future. Finally, there is a normative step in which a policy is proposed as a response in the service of some goal—for example, to reduce crime or to correct socioeconomic imbalances. In comparison to the normative step, the inductive step of a policy defense may seem trivial. We argue that this is not so. Satisfying the demands of the inductive step is difficult, and doing so has important but underappreciated implications for the normative step. In this paper, we provide an account of induction in social contexts and explore its implications for policy. Our account helps to explain which normative principles we ought to accept, and as a result it can explain why it is acceptable to make inferences involving race in some contexts (e.g., in defense of affirmative action) but not in others (e.g., in defense of racial profiling).
Weapon and Shield: Apologies and the Duty to be Vulnerable
coauthored with Katie Stockdale and Audrey Yap
Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, 9 (3): 1-20 (2023)
Apologies are an important part of moral life and a method by which someone can satisfy their reparative obligations. At the same time, apologies can be used both as a shield to protect the person apologizing, as well as a weapon against the person to whom the apology is owed. In this paper we unpack both of these claims. We defend two principles one should employ to try to avoid such bad outcomes: (1) Apologies must be one-sided and non-transactional, and (2) the wrongdoer must be willing to pay what they owe. We argue that these principles require the wrongdoer’s emotional vulnerability. Furthermore, we argue that the duty to be vulnerable in issuing apologies helps to make sense of why apologizing well is so difficult, and why members of privileged groups might be especially prone to apologizing badly.
Betrayed Expectations: Misdirected Anger and the Preservation of Ideology
coauthored with Audrey Yap
Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 24 (3): (2023)
This paper explores a phenomenon that we call “justified-but-misdirected anger,” in which one’s anger is grounded in or born from a genuine wrong or injustice but is directed towards an inappropriate target. In particular, we argue that oppressive ideologies that maintain systems of gender, race, and class encourage such misdirection and are thereby self-perpetuating. We engage with two particular examples of such misdirection. The first includes poor white voters who embrace racist and xenophobic politics; they are justified in being angry about their own economic exploitation, but that anger is misdirected in a way that maintains capitalism (which is the appropriate target of their anger). The second includes so-called “incels” who embrace misogyny; they are justified in being angry about unrealistic and unhealthy standards of contemporary masculinity, but that anger is misdirected in a way that maintains patriarchy. One goal of exploring this type of justified-but-misdirected anger is to thread the needle between holding wrongdoers to account while also clearly identifying the oppressive ideologies that influence their actions.
Not Giving Up on Zuko: Relational Identity and the Stories We Tell
coauthored with Audrey Yap
Avatar: The Last Airbender and Philosophy. Wisdom from Aang to Zuko, edited by Helen De Cruz & Johan De Smedt. Wiley-Blackwell.
Everyone thinks they know who Prince Zuko is and can be. His father, Fire Lord Ozai, and sister, Azula, think him weak, disobedient, and undeserving of the crown. His Uncle Iroh thinks him good, if troubled, but ultimately worthy of his faith. The kids initially think him a villain, but eventually come to see him as a person – neither monster nor saint – someone who can choose to go in a new way. Zuko himself shows great ambivalence between these conflicting stories about who he is, though each one helps to craft his own self-understanding. In this paper, we apply Hilde Lindemann’s narrative account of the self to explore the ways that others “hold” Zuko in one identity or “let him go” from others. According to Lindemann, our personal identities consist of the first- and third-person stories that cluster around significant acts, relationships, and commitments in our lives. Our identities are fundamentally relational, formed by the interaction between our own self-conception and the ways in which others see us. As such, others’ stories can enable or prevent us from imaginatively projecting ourselves into a particular future. This can lead us to becoming trapped in our identities; without the possibility of being perceived differently by others, we might find ourselves unable to try different ways of being or acting. The converse is also true, in that others can open up new possible identities by seeing things in us that we have trouble seeing in ourselves. If others in our moral community see us as wicked, beyond redemption and unable to repair our wrongs, we are held in the role of the villain and might come to live into that role without question. Zuko’s story is a perfect illustration of Jean Harvey’s reminder that, “it is just not true that once a thief, always a thief” and that agents can choose to go in a new way, can choose to change. How does Zuko change? We argue that Zuko’s redemption is enabled by those in his moral community holding him in identities in which he is a good person, capable and deserving of care, friendship, and love. While the identity he has in relation to his father and sister closes down many possible futures, his uncle Iroh in particular persists in holding him in an identity in which he is loved and worthy of love. And in doing so - in holding this space for him - Iroh opens up a way for Zuko to exercise agency and choose to become a different kind of person than the one he thought he was destined to be.
The Limits of the Rights to Free Thought and Expression
Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 31 (2): 133-152. (2021)
It is often held that people have a moral right to believe and say whatever they want. For instance, one might claim that they have a right to believe racist things as long as they keep those thoughts to themselves. Or, one might claim that they have a right to pursue any philosophical question they want as long as they do so with a civil tone. In this paper I object to those claims and argue that no one has such unlimited moral rights. In Part 1 I explore the value of the freedoms of thought and expression. In Part 2 I argue against the unlimited moral right to free expression, focusing in particular on the special obligations and moral constraints that obtain for academics. In Part 3 I argue against the unlimited moral right to free thought.
Love, Activism, and Social Justice
Love, Justice, and Autonomy: Philosophical Perspectives, edited by Rachel Fedock, Michael Kühler & T. Raja Rosenhagen. New York: Routledge. (2020)
This paper analyzes the relationship between love and social justice activism, focusing in particular on ways in which activists rely on either the union account of love (to argue that when one person is oppressed everyone is oppressed), the sentimentalist account of love (to argue that overcoming injustice is fundamentally about how we feel about one another), or love as fate (to argue that it is in love’s nature to triumph over hatred and injustice). All three accounts, while understandable and attractive, are seriously problematic, as they tend either to obscure important differences in the ways that various groups are socially situated or to enable inaction by trusting that justice is inevitable. Alternative, deeper interpretations of each account (and their relationships to activism) are explored.
Pacifism, Politics, and Feminism: Intersections and Innovations, edited by Jennifer Kling. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Rodopi. (2019)
I argue that silencing (the act of preventing someone from communicating, broadly construed) can be an act of both interpersonal and institutional violence. My argument has two main steps. First, I follow others in analyzing violence as violation of integrity and show that undermining someone’s capacities as a knower can be such a violation. Second, I argue that silencing someone can violate their epistemic capacities in that way. I conclude by exploring when silencing someone might be morally justifiable, even if doing so is an act of violence.
Forgiveness and Reconciliation
The Moral Psychology of Forgiveness, edited by Kathryn J. Norlock. London, UK: Rowman and Littlefield: 117-134 (2017)
Forgiveness has received considerably more attention in the Western philosophical literature than has reconciliation. That’s unfortunate, since both are important responses to wrongdoing and are central to moral life. In this paper I develop an account of interpersonal reconciliation. On my view reconciliation is fundamentally bilateral (whereas forgiveness is fundamentally unilateral). It entails transparency and agreement between the wrongdoer and the victim as to the nature of a past wrong or set of wrongs. And, it requires that moral repair be made between the two parties (which entails that both parties bear proper attitudes towards each other). In making my case I contrast reconciliation with toleration and collaboration, in order to demonstrate that reconciliation also entails forgiveness (though forgiveness definitely does not entail reconciliation).
Love and Resistance: Moral Solidarity in the Face of Perceptual Failure
Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, 2 (2): 1-21 (Fall 2016)
In this paper I explore how we ought to respond to the problematic inner lives of those that we love. I argue for an understanding of love that is radical, challenging, and that can be a powerful form of resistance within the confines of everyday relationships. Far from the platitudinous and saccharine, I will argue that love does not call for us only to celebrate our loved ones’ strengths and accomplishments, nor for us to accept our loved ones’ failings. Instead, part of what loving another requires is believing in their potential to grow, holding them to account when they fail, and expecting them to be better.
I argue that loving others means meeting them where they are and working to understand the role that oppressive ideologies, coupled with cognitive biases, play in generating and entrenching their problematic mental states. I then argue that we ought not disengage with our loved ones or write them off as lost causes, nor should we accept that we will simply “agree to disagree.” Instead, we should stand in moral solidarity with our loved ones and press them to become better while simultaneously understanding that such moral growth is usually a slow and painful process – often, the project of a lifetime.
Empathy and a Life of Moral Endeavor
Hypatia, 31 (1): 171-186 (2016)
Over the course of her career, Jean Harvey contributed many invaluable insights that help to make sense of both injustice and resistance. Specifically, she developed an account of what she called “civilized oppression,” which is pernicious in part because it can be difficult to perceive. One way that we ought to pursue what she calls a “life of moral endeavor” is by increasing our perceptual awareness of civilized oppression and ourselves as its agents.
In this paper I argue that one noxious form of civilized oppression is what Miranda Fricker calls “testimonial injustice.” I then follow Harvey in arguing that one of the methods by which we should work to avoid perpetrating testimonial injustice is by empathizing with others. This is true for two reasons. The first is that in order to manifest what Fricker calls the virtue of testimonial justice, we must have a method by which we “correct” our prejudices or implicit biases, and empathy serves as such a corrective. The second is that there are cases where the virtue of testimonial justice wouldn’t in fact correct for testimonial injustice in the way that Fricker suggests, but that actively working to empathize would.
Perceptual Failure and a Life of Moral Endeavor
Social Philosophy Today, 31: 129-139 (2015)
Over the course of her career, Jean Harvey argued that as agents engaged in a “life of moral endeavor,” we should understand ourselves and others to be moral works in progress, always possessing the potential to grow beyond and become more than the sum of our past wrongs.
In this paper I follow Harvey and argue that in order to live a life of moral endeavor, it is not enough merely to know about injustice. Instead, we must engage in the difficult and often painful task of overcoming deep-seated cognitive biases that cause us to fail to perceive the ubiquitous injustice that pervades our world. I conclude by arguing that education, empathy, and love can each help us to increase our perceptual awareness of injustice and so should be recognized to be crucial parts of a life of moral endeavor.