ABOUT

I started my career in philosophy as a moral philosopher. My Friendship, Altruism, and Morality (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980 [Routledge Revivals, 2009]) was one of the first defenses of the role of altruistic emotions (compassion, sympathy, concern, care) against a pervasive rationalism of that period, and was an early articulation of what soon after came to be called “care ethics.” It was an exercise in what was then beginning to be called “moral psychology”—the philosophical exploration of human capabilities bearing on leading a moral life—that also dovetailed with the rise of virtue ethics. My 1994 collection of essays, Moral Perception and Particularity (Cambridge UP) carried on this project, branching into moral perception, Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy, altruistic emotions in young children, the issue of “moral saints,” a direct engagement with feminist care ethics, and the morality of Holocaust rescue.

In the early 1990’s I began working in the related areas of race, education, and multiculturalism, prompted in part by my three children attending very racially and ethnically diverse public schools of Cambridge, Mass, and my becoming active as a parent around racial, cultural, and class issues. I was also responding to the efforts in the 1980’s of a small group of African American philosophers to show the way to a distinctly philosophical approach to racial issues (Bernard Boxill, Howard McGary, Lucius Outlaw, Anita Allen, Adrian Piper, Tommy Lott, Bill Lawson, and others). My “I’m Not a Racist, But...”: The Moral Quandary of Race (Cornell UP, 2002) grew out of that interest. (It was selected Social Philosophy Book of the year by the North American Society for Social Philosophy.)

At the same time I started to work in the area of philosophy of education, working within a recently influential strand of political philosophy of education, often focused on educational justice and racial and multicultural issues, in my case joining with my earlier interest in moral education and moral development. I have taught political philosophy of education as a visitor at Stanford School of Education, and four different semesters at Teachers College, Columbia University. I taught a (non-philosophy) course on anti-racist and multicultural education for many years at UMass. Listen to an interview I gave to philosophy podcast PIPEline.fm  (audio, 11 minutes) about being a philosopher of education.

In the early ‘00’s I arranged to teach a course on race and racism at my local public high school to a very diverse and minority white class. I taught the course four times and several years later wrote a book about it, High Schools, Race, and America’s Future: What Students Can Teach Us About Morality, Diversity, and Community (Harvard Education Press, 2012). Interviews about this course and the experience of teaching it can be found here  [video, 26 minutes], and here [audio, 15 minutes]. I have worked directly with teachers on racial issues. I teach a professional development course for school personnel on dealing with racial issues with students and colleagues.

In more recent years I have also written on the Holocaust, and on race and film, while continuing to work on empathy and fellow-feeling.

Read an interview on the Italian philosophy website Aphex.it, where I talk at length about my career as a philosopher.

I have been a visiting professor at UCLA (in Philosophy), Stanford School of Education, Teachers College (Columbia University), and Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa (in Philosophy).

I am married to the historian and film scholar, Judith Smith, who teaches in American Studies at UMass-Boston.

RECENT AND SELECTED ARTICLES

• “Affirmative Action, Diversity, and Racial Justice: Reflections from a Diverse, Non-Elite University,” Theory and Research in Education, 14:3, November 2016: 348-362
  The “diversity” framework the Supreme Court has imposed on affirmative action weakens its justice import in theory and practice. The increasing alignment of wealth with attendance at selective institutions betokens a diminishing quality of student at those institutions. So some of the perceived advantages of affirmative action rely on an increasingly false sense of the quality differences between more and less highly-ranked institutions. Aligning those rankings with the quality of student (and quality of instruction at the different kinds of institution) would have the net effect of benefiting black and Latino students as a group. More generally, improving the quality of education and the standing of less selective higher education institutions is an urgent racial educational justice challenge of the current moment, from which affirmative action diverts attention. 
• ​“Races, Racialized Groups, and Racial Identity: Perspectives from South Africa and the US,” in Xolela Mangcu (ed.), The Colour of our Future. Johannesburg, South Africa: Wits University Press, 2015
  Racialized groups are groups treated and regarded as if they possessed the characteristics attributed to them in classic racist ideology (inherent psychological characteristics, superiority and inferiority to other races). Blacks in both the US and South Africa are racialized groups in that sense but differently according to the somewhat different racist ideologies in the two countries. Racialized identity can be positive. This tends to be denied by the South African doctrine of “non-racialism,” though it was affirmed by the Black Consciousness movement. Non-racialism is nevertheless a largely racially progressive ideology in contrast to “color blindness” in the US, which comes to little more than race denial.
• “Race, Ethnicity, Nationality, and Philosophy,” Debating Race: Philosophical Dialogues on Race, Ethnicity, and Hispanic/Latino Identity Between Jorge Gracia and His Critics (Columbia UP, 2015), reprint (portion of) “Latinos on Race and Ethnicity: Alcoff, Corlett, and Gracia,” Blackwell Companion to Latin American Philosophy (ed. S. Nuccetelli, O. Schutte, O. Bueno) (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)
  Gracia adopts as a general principle that an account of both ethnicity and race should help us see aspects of reality that would otherwise be obscured; but this is at odds with his regarding the Latin American view of race as more rational than the U.S. version with its “one-drop rule.” The latter has structured the reality of race in the U.S. for African Americans. Gracia has an unsubstantiated and misplaced sense that the mixedness of Latin American racial identity is somehow to be preferred to the more binary U.S. form.
• “Race and Class Categories and Subcategories in Educational Thought and Research,” Theory and Research in Education, March 2015: 1-18
  Educational thought and research often operates with whole-race (“black,” “white,” “Asian”) and whole-class (“low-income") categories, masking explanatorily and normatively important subdivisions. Regarding affirmative action, on average, among "blacks," African and Afro-Caribbean immigrants, and to some extent their offspring, have educational and motivational advantages over, and a distinct normative standing from, African Americans. With regard to the performance of “high commitment” charter schools, such as KIPP, that make substantial demands on parents of admitted students compared to traditional public schools serving similar class- and race-defined populations, it is essential to internally differentiate the relevant race and class categories with respect to degree of poverty, English language learner status, and parental capital. Doing so poses normative problems for such charter schools.
• "Three educational values for a multicultural society: Difference recognition, national cohesion and equality," Journal of Moral Education, 43:3, 2014: 1-13
  Educational aims for societies comprising multiple ethnic, cultural, and racial groups should involve three different values—recognizing difference, national cohesion, and equality. Recognition of difference acknowledges and respects ethnocultural identities and encourages mutual engagement across difference. National cohesion involves teaching a sense of civic attachment to a nation and to one’s fellow citizens of different groups and identities. “Multiculturalism” has traditionally been understood to support the first value but not as much the second, a charge made by “interculturalism,” a newer idea in Europe and Francophone Canada. Tariq Modood has argued that national integration has always been a goal of multiculturalism. However, neither multiculturalism nor interculturalism has placed sufficient emphasis on equality as a social and educational ideal. Equality is a complex idea that involves both equal treatment by teachers of students from different groups but also relative equal student outcomes among different groups.
• “Multiculturalism,” for Denis Phillips (ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Theory and Philosophy (SAGE Publishers 2014)
  Surveys issues in educational multiculturalism: equality and difference; culture and race; tolerance and respect; relativism; the multiple, distinct values understood as compromising multiculturalism.
• ​“Human Morality, Naturalism, and Accommodation: Reflections on David Wong’s Natural Moralities,” in Yang Xiao and Yong Huang (ed.), Moral Relativism and Chinese Philosophy: David Wong and His Critics (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014): 33-47
  David Wong’s important book Natural Moralities sees morality as fundamentally about regulating behavior within human groups. I argue that such a conception cannot capture the generally accepted feature of morality that it must apply to all human beings as human beings; and that Wong’s evolutionism and “naturalism” get in the way of his recognition of “humanity” as a central moral concept.
• “False Symmetries in Far From Heaven and Elsewhere,” in Susan Wolf and Christopher Grau (eds.), Understanding Love Through Philosophy, Film, and Fiction (Oxford University Press, 2014): 37-59
  A common trope in many Hollywood films dealing with race is a symmetry between white and black with respect to some aspect of racism—both blacks and whites are shown to be prejudiced, or discriminatory, or using stereotypes of the other. Generally, this symmetry is false or misleading. In Far From Heaven, a critically-acclaimed 2002 film set in the 1950’s, dealing with race, gender, and sexual orientation, an upper middle class white housewife begins a romantically-charged friendship with her black gardener. Her social set disapproves of this relationship, and the film nicely portrays the racism of these well-bred and privileged Northerners; but it also depicts the black community similarly disapproving of the relationship, and ultimately running the gardener and his 11-year-old daughter out of town by throwing stones through his window. I show how the portrayed symmetry—both blacks and whites are bigoted and both viciously oppose a black-white romance—is entirely false to the period in which the film is set. I more briefly consider several other prominent Hollywood films dealing with race that involve false symmetries, and a German one, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, inspired by the same film that inspired Far From Heaven, that avoids it. 
• “Racial and Other Asymmetries: A Problem for the Protected Categories Framework for Antidiscrimination Thought,” in Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law, edited by Sophia Moreau and Deborah Hellman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013): 182-199
  In the American judicial tradition, “protected categories” are social categories regarded as deserving of special protection against discrimination on the basis of them (e.g. race, gender, religion, disability). The protected category framework implies a default presumption of moral symmetry across a given category—for example that discriminating against blacks, or women, has the same moral valence as discriminating against whites, or men. I argue that this presumption is false and that we should generally abandon the language of “discrimination on the basis of.” Discrimination is not a unitary wrong, but involves a plurality of different wrongs in different contexts. This plurality, as well as moral asymmetries within some of the wrongs singly, account for the asymmetries among sub-groups of a given protected category. 
• “Political Identity and Moral Education: A Response to Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind,” Journal of Moral Education, 42:3, 298-315 (2013)
  In The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt claims that liberals have a narrower moral outlook than do conservatives; they are concerned with fairness and relief of suffering, which Haidt sees as individualistic values, while conservatives in addition care about authority and loyalty, values concerned (he says) with holding society together. I question Haidt’s methodology, which overlooks liberals who express concerns with social bonds that do not fit within an “authority” or “loyalty” framework. Political liberalism has richer moral resources to draw on than Haidt recognizes.
  I also argue that of Haidt's six “moral foundations,” fairness and relief of suffering are more fundamental values than are authority and loyalty, which are virtues only if their objects are worthy. Moral education programs must also permit inquiry into the reasons for political behavior (e.g. voting) other than professed (liberal or conservative) value commitments. In light of these considerations, conservatism emerges as morally flimsier than Haidt claims, and liberalism more morally robust.
• “Benevolence,” International Encyclopedia of Ethics (ed. Hugh LaFollette) (Wiley-Blackwell, on-line, 2013)(13 pp)
  Benevolence, a sentiment involving concern for the good of others, differs from other moral motives to promote others’ good, such as Kant’s duty of beneficence, Iris Murdoch’s “seeing,” and the Confucian tradition’s ren. I discuss Butler's and Hume's views on benevolence, and compare benevolence to “care,” whose object is more strongly individualized. Nietzsche, Freud, Anna Freud, and Max Scheler recognize distorted and defective forms of benevolence that possess diminished moral value or none at all. Benevolence, in something like ordinary parlance, is too robust for certain very minimal sorts of responsiveness to the plight of others, and is too insubstantial for other sorts.
• “Racialized Groups: The Socio-historical Consensus,” MONIST, issue on Race, April, 2010, vol. 93, #2: 298-320  
  Among race scholars, there is a general consensus that (1) groups thought to be races in the 19th/20th century do not possess the characteristics attributed to them in classic racial ideology, (2) such groups are nevertheless intergenerational collectivities with distinctive social and historical experiences, and (3) those experiences were and are deeply shaped by the false beliefs of classic racial ideology. The groups of whom this consensus is true may be referred to as “racialized groups,” terminology preferable to “social construction,” “classic racial groups,” “ethnic groups,” and “ancestral/descent groups,” though each of these has something to be said for it.  The socio-historical consensus is not, however, adequately reflected in recent work on race, for example, by Appiah (who confuses race and racialization), Mallon (who does not capture the “group-ness” of racialized groups), and Glasgow (who does not capture the way the false ideology of race has shaped the experience of racialized groups). 
• “Charter Schools, Education Markets, and Democracy,” in J. Fay and M. Levinson (eds.), Dilemmas of Educational Ethics: Cases and Commentaries (Harvard Education Press, 2016)

FORTHCOMING ARTICLES 

• “Affirmative Action, Diversity, and Racial Justice: Reflections from a Diverse, Non-Elite University,” Theory and Research in Education, November 2016
  The “diversity” framework the Supreme Court has imposed on affirmative action weakens its justice import in theory and practice. The increasing alignment of wealth with attendance at selective institutions betokens a diminishing quality of student at those institutions. So some of the perceived advantages of affirmative action rely on an increasingly false sense of the quality differences between more and less highly-ranked institutions. Aligning those rankings with the quality of student (and quality of instruction at the different kinds of institution) would have the net effect of benefiting black and Latino students as a group. More generally, improving the quality of education and the standing of less selective higher education institutions is an urgent racial educational justice challenge of the current moment, from which affirmative action diverts attention. 
• “A Moral Account of Empathy and Fellow Feeling,” in T. Schramme and N. Roughley (eds.), Forms of Fellow Feeling: Empathy, Sympathy, Concern and Moral Agency. Cambridge University Press, 2016
  I develop a moral account of empathy as a species of fellow-feeling (like sympathy, compassion, care). Scheler shows that empathy in this sense does not require and is certainly not coextensive with having the same feeling as the other. He emphasizes the requirement of having a clear lived sense of oneself as a particular individual distinct from the target of empathy. Fellow feeling is morally valuable not solely in its role as promoting beneficent action, as it shares with respect, recognition and acknowledgment (“recognitional attitudes”) a value not so dependent on helping the other. This analysis is used to criticize current views of empathy of Darwall, Slote, Prinz, Snow, and Eisenberg (a psychologist). The intentional object of empathy is not the other’s state of mind but her situation with respect to her well-being. Distinct forms of fellow-feeling (empathy, concern, sympathy) are differentiated, including by distinct values that they exemplify.
  
• “One-to-One Fellow-Feeling, Universal Identification and Oneness, and Group Solidarities,” for volume on Eastern and Western Perspectives on Oneness, edited by O. Flanagan, V. Harrison, PJ Ivanhoe (Columbia University Press)