Members
The members of the APA's Committee on Public Philosophy serve on a rotating basis of appointments.
Committee Chair
Dr. Eric Thomas Weber is Assistant Professor of Public Policy Leadership at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS. His first two books were be released with Continuum Press of London. The first is called Rawls, Dewey, and Constructivism (2010) and the second is called Morality, Leadership, and Public Policy (2011). His third book is under contract with Lexington Books, a division of Rowman and Littlefield, and is titled Democracy and Leadership (2012). He also is on contract as a regular freelance columnist for The Clarion Ledger, the major Mississippi newspaper based out of Jackson, MS.
He has served as Associate Chair of the committee from 2010-2011 and now serves as Chair through June of 2014. Email: etweber@olemiss.edu. Web site: http://www.ericthomasweber.org.
Associate Chair
The position of Associate Chair is filled the year before a transition to a new chair, to help with continuity through the change. The next Associate Chair will serve for the year 2013-2014. When the time comes, members of the American Philosophical Association can submit nominations on the APA's Web site - http://www.apaonline.org - login is required.
Committee Members
Dr. Owen Anderson is Assistant Professor in the department of Philosophy of Religion at Arizona State University. His research areas include the Ethics of Belief, World Religions and Common Ground, and the Problem of Evil. His book The Clarity of God’s Existence: The Ethics of Belief After the Enlightenment (2008) examines the role of proofs for God’s existence in making sense of redemptive claims. He is serving on the committee through June of 2013. Web site: http://www.owenanderson.net/.
Dr. Lawrence C. Becker is a Fellow of Hollins University. He is the author of monographs, scholarly articles and reviews in the areas of ethical theory, social, political, and legal philosophy, and the editor of several reference works. His monographs include Property Rights: Philosophic Foundations (Routledge and Kegan Paul 1977; 1980), Reciprocity (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986, University of Chicago Press, 1990), and A New Stoicism (Princeton, 1998, 1999). Since 1979, he has had a variety of editorial roles at the journal Ethics, including twelve years as an associate editor, a year as acting editor, and two years as book review editor. He is serving on the committee through June of 2012. Web site: http://www.bookwork.net/Content%20pages/BW-bio-LCB.htm
Dr. Michael J. Cholbi is Professor of Philosophy at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (more colloquially known as Cal Poly Pomona). His research is principally in ethics, with particular emphases on suicide, punishment, Kant’s ethics, moral dilemmas, and moral psychology. He has recently completed a book manuscript on philosophical issues in suicide for Broadview Press. He is also a contributor to two blogs: PEA Soup, a forum for philosophical ethics, and In Socrates’ Wake, a blog on teaching philosophy. He begins a five-year term as the editor of the journal Teaching Philosophy in 2011. He is serving on the committee until June of 2014. Web site: http://michael.cholbi.com/
Dr. Kendall D'Andrade has served as Lecturer in philosophy at the Loyola University of Chicago and Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His works have included contributions to business ethics, as well as articles on bribery, "Hegel on Affirmative Action," and "Which Logic Should You Use?" He also edited Profit and Responsibility: Issues in Business and Professional Ethics (1985) with Patricia Werhane. He is serving on the committee through 2012.
Dr. Pablo F. Muchnik is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Emerson College. He is the author of Kant's Theory of Evil: An Essay on the Dangers of Self-Love and the Aprioricity of History (Lexington Books, 2009), editor of the first two volumes of Rethinking Kant (Cambridge Scholar Publishers, Vol. I, 2008; Vol. II, forthcoming), co-editor (with Sharon Anderson-Gold) of Kant's Anatomy of Evil (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and director of the series Kantian Questions from Cambridge Scholar Publishers. Dr. Muchnik is the recipient of various national and international scholarships and awards, and is currently vice president of the North American Kant Society. He is serving on the committee until June of 2014. Web site: http://www.emerson.edu/academics/departments/communication-studies/faculty?facultyID=2954
Dr. Thomas M. Powers is Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department and research fellow of the Delaware Biotechnology Institute at the University of Delaware. He directs the Science, Ethics, and Public Policy program and serves as assistant director of the Delaware Interdisciplinary Ethics Program. Prior to coming to Delaware, he was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia. His Ph.D. in philosophy (University of Texas at Austin) concerned formalism in ethics and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Some of his recent research focuses on the ethics of emerging technologies (especially nanotechnology), computer ethics, and environmental ethics. He is serving on the committee through June of 2012. Web site: http://udel.edu/~tpowers/.
Dr. Kyle Powys Whyte is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Michigan State University and affiliated faculty at the Center for the Study of Standards in Society (CS3) and in the American Indian Studies Program. He writes on issues in environmental justice, the philosophies of science and technology, and American Indian philosophy. His articles are published in journals such as Synthese, Knowledge, Technology & Policy, Ethics, Place & Environment, Continental Philosophy Review, Philosophy & Technology, Environmental Philosophy, Public Integrity, and Rural Social Sciences, and he is a principal investigator on research projects exploring justice, agriculture, and the environment funded by the National Science Foundation, Spencer Foundation, and Creating Inclusive Excellence Grants (MSU). He is a fellow in the Michigan Environmental and Natural Resources Governance Program, a member of the Michigan Environmental Justice Working Group, and Book Review Editor for the journal Ethics, Policy & Environment. He is serving on the committee through June of 2013. Web site: http://www.philosophy.msu.edu/faculty/assistant-professor/kyle-powys-whyte.
Dr. Rega Wood is a Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University, Bloomington, and an Emerita Professor at Stanford University. As a medievalist, she specializes in scholastic ethics and philosophy of science. An expert on medieval manuscripts, she has published a dozen critical editions of works by great scholastic philosophers, including Richard Rufus, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Adam Wodeham, as well as numerous articles on problems in medieval philosophy. She is interested in supporting research and teaching in the humanities and in supporting the philosophical profession internationally as well as nationally. She is serving on the committee until June of 2014. Web sites: http://www.indiana.edu/~phil/ and http://rrp.stanford.edu/rega.html.
Dr. Paul Woodruff is Dean of the School of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written a number of definitive translations from ancient Greek, including works by Plato, Sophocles, and Thucydides. He has written several books that interpret classical philosophy for political, business, or personal situations in contemporary lives. His publications include The Necessity of Theater: The Art of Watching and Being Watched (2008), First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea (2005), and Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue (2001), Reason and Religion in Socratic Philosophy (edited with Nicholas Smith, 2000), Early Greek Political Thought from Homer to the Sophists (with M. Gagarin, 1995), and Thucydides on Justice, Power, and Human Nature (1993). An upcoming publication, The Ajax Dilemma, uses a parable from classical Greece to provide a moral compass for a very contemporary dilemma: how to distribute rewards and public recognition without damaging the social fabric. Watch Dr. Woodruff interviewed by Bill Moyers about Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue. He is serving on the committee through June of 2013. Web site: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/philosophy/faculty/pbw55.
If you would like to review lists of past members of the committee on public philosophy, you can find those on the APA's Web page for the committee here: http://web.apa.udel.edu/governance/committees/public/index.aspx .