Faculty

Ting-an Lin: Common Curriculum Grant

Congratulations to Assistant Professor of Philosophy Ting-an Lin, whose two new course proposals, “Markets, Ethics, and Society” and “Ethics of Technology and Engineering,” were recently awarded the new Common Curriculum Grant. This grant supplies funding to faculty members who are creating courses that will be implemented into the new Common Curriculum for Leadership and Global Citizenship.

 

The Common Curriculum program, slated for a Fall 2025 introduction, provides students with a foundation for future learning. Ensuring that all students at the University of Connecticut are literate in many different types of knowledge, the Common Curriculum allows for students to enter society with a strong sense of moral and social responsibility.

Jane Gordon: “Creolising the State?”

We are thrilled to share that our affiliated faculty member and Professor in Political Science, Jane Gordon, has recently published an article titled “Creolising the State?” in Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory. This prestigious journal is one of the top publications in the field, both in South Africa and globally.

You can read the article here: Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory.

Please join us in congratulating Professor Gordon on this incredible achievement!

Dorit Bar-On: APA 2025 Pacific Division Meeting

At this year’s APA Pacific Division Meeting, Professor of Philosophy Dorit Bar-On will be holding an Author Meets Critics session on her recently published book, Expression and Self-Knowledge. This book, co-authored by Crispin Wright, was published as part of Wiley-Blackwell’s Great Debates in Philosophy series. An excerpt from the book’s description can be found below:

In Expression and Self-Knowledge, Dorit Bar-On and Crispin Wright articulate their joint dissatisfaction with extant accounts of self-knowledge and engage in a sustained and substantial critical debate over the merits of an expressivist approach to the topic. The authors incorporate cutting-edge research while defending their own alternatives to existing approaches to so-called ‘first-person privilege’.

In addition, one of our incredible graduate students, Michael Hegarty, has also been invited to chair the session.

The meeting will be held in San Francisco, California starting on April 16th and through April 19th.

Congratulations, Dorit and Michael!

William Lycan on Mind, Meaning, and Method

Mitchell Green, Co-editor

William Lycan is an internationally renowned American philosopher whose work since the late 1960s has been not only extensive but also influential, particularly in the areas of philosophy of mind, epistemology, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and more recently metaphilosophy. This contributed volume features high-quality contributions by prominent or up-and-coming philosophers who critically examine many aspects of Lycan’s work; it also contains an essay by Lycan responding to these contributions. In this way, not only is the importance of William Lycan’s work appreciated, it is also made accessible for further research. The book is also suitable for teaching purposes at universities.

Cover of William Lycan on Mind, Meaning, and Method.

Law, Politics, and Responding to Injustice

Ting-an Lin, Contributor

Chapter 9: “Acting Together to Address Structural Injustice: A Deliberative Mini-public Proposal”

Structural injustices exist when the impact of social structure exposes some groups of people to undeserved burdens while conferring unearned power to others. It has been argued that the responsibility for addressing structural injustices is shared among all the participants of the wrongful social structures and can only be discharged through collective action; however, the proper form of collective action does not happen easily. This chapter contributes to the discussions on addressing structural injustice in two steps. First, it categorizes three forms of practical challenges encountered by existing proposals for discharging shared responsibility for structural injustice. Second, it proposes an alternative proposal based on a type of political institution named deliberative mini-publics, which involves a diverse group of people convening to deliberate on issues of public concern and produce results that can be used as guidance for the greater public in responding to those issues. The deliberative mini-public proposal suggests establishing multiple deliberative mini-publics and making participation in the mini-publics a civic duty to address issues of structural injustice. This chapter argues that the deliberative mini-public proposal has the potential to complement existing proposals in mobilizing structural change and overcoming the identified practical challenges.

Cover of "Law, Politics, and Responding to Injustice."

Lewis Gordon: Tavis Smiley

Check out Distinguished Professor Lewis Gordon’s recent media appearance on the Tavis Smiley podcast. Dr. Gordon has worked with Tavis Smiley in the past, discussing topics such as political extremism, black consciousness, and more. In this episode, Smiley and Gordon discuss racial justice and anti-blackness policies, centering the argument around how we can cultivate Black consciousness without fear.

 

Congratulations, Lewis!

Tracy Llanera: The Moral Agency of White Terror Wolves

This Friday, December 13th, Associate Professor of Philosophy Tracy Llanera will be giving a talk at the event Digital Transformations: Identity, Gender and Affectivity hosted at Cardiff University. Along with Professor Llanera, Dr. Gen Eickers, Dr. Lucy Osler, Dr. Louise Richardson-Self and Dr. Francesca Sobande will also be speaking at the event.

 

Professor Tracy Llanera will be presenting The Moral Agency of White Terror Wolves, and you can read the abstract of her talk below:

The Moral Agency of White Terror Wolves
Tracy Llanera
This paper investigates the case of “white terror wolves,” or extremists responsible for violent lone attacks committed in the name of white supremacist ideology; examples include Anders Breivik (Norway), Dylann Storm Roof (USA), Brenton Tarrant (Australia), John Earnest (USA), Patrick Wood Crusius (USA), and Stephan Balliet (Germany). Government actors and the media often describe these perpetrators as being mentally ill or brainwashed—a perspective that risks misconstruing mental illness as the key driver for domestic terrorism instead of white extremism. This paper contests this perspective by ascribing moral agency to white terror wolves. Its analysis proceeds in three parts. First, it describes the role of white terror wolves in white extremism and the pernicious framing of their perpetrator identity as being mentally ill. Second, drawing on Alasdair MacIntyre’s moral philosophy, it outlines a conception of moral agency that is relevant to these cases. Third, it interrogates how white terror wolves exercise their moral agency to the point of moral failure.

 

While the in-person event will be held in Wales, you can join online at 9:30AM London (4:30AM EST), with the event ending at 4:30PM London (11:30AM EST).

 

Congratulations, Tracy!

Ting-an Lin: AI, Normality, and Oppressive Things

Assistant Professor of Philosophy Ting-an Lin will be giving a public lecture a the Academic Sinica in Taiwan this Friday, December 13th. This talk is a part of their Beyond Gender: Diversity, Plurality, and Philosophy series. Professor Lin will also be joined by Assistant Professor Zhen-Rong Gan from Tunghai University and Hsiang-Yun Chen from Academia Sinica; they will be acting as the discussant and the moderator respectively.

 

Professor Ting-an Lin will be presenting her paper “AI, Normality, and Oppressive Things,” and you can read the abstract below:

While it is well-known that AI systems can be perniciously biased, much attention has been paid to instances where these biases are expressed blatantly. In this talk, I draw on the literature on the political impacts of artifacts to argue that many AI systems are not merely biased but materialize oppression. In other words, many AI systems should be recognized as oppressive things when they function to calcify oppressive normality, which treats the dominant groups as normal, whereas others as deviations. Adopting this framework emphasizes the crucial roles that physical components play in sustaining oppression and helps identify instances of AI systems that are oppressive in a subtler way. Using instances of generative AI systems as the central examples, I theorize three ways that AI systems might function to calcify oppressive normality—through their content, their performance, and their style. Since the oppressiveness of oppressive things is a matter of degree, I further analyze three contributing factors that make the oppressive impacts of AI systems especially concerning. I end by discussing the limitations of existing measures and urge the exploration of more transformative remedies.

 

Congratulations, Ting!

 

Lewis Gordon: Londis Lectureship Speaker

On November 21st, Distinguished Professor Lewis Gordon presented his paper Freedom Relished, Freedom Feared for the James J. Londis and Family Lecture. Held at the 2024 Society of Adventist Philosophers conference, Professor Gordon speaks about the responsibility that comes with freedom, and that we must exercise our right to choice, despite the fear or insecurity that may accompany it. Gordon also suggests that in order to maintain a healthy society, we must communicate with one another despite disagreements: we need to “[develop] ways of living together on this every shrinking planet.”

 

To read the full summary article on the lecture, please see the Spectrum website.