Dr. Amy Gutmann visits my Public Philosophy & Civic Engagement seminar
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
I direct outreach efforts for UNC’s Department of Philosophy and the Parr Center for Ethics. We regularly partner with K-12 schools, community colleges, libraries, prisons, juvenile justice facilities, museums, professional organizations, retirement communities, and other community venues and campus units to offer philosophy and ethics programming to the public. As representatives of the university for North Carolina, we aim to produce and disseminate knowledge for the public good through democratic partnerships and collaborations. For information about our outreach programming, visit the Parr Center’s outreach page.
I serve on the Executive Committee of the National High School Ethics Bowl, the Executive Committee of the Middle School Ethics Bowl, the Public Philosophy Committee of the American Philosophical Association, and the Academic Advisory Board of the Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization.
Some highlights of my work at UNC
Coordinating a partnership between the Parr Center and TED-Ed that produces rigorous and accessible resources on philosophical ethics through videos on ethical dilemmas, concepts, and methods.
Teaching and designing experiential and service-learning courses in philosophy, including courses centered on Ethics Bowl, intergenerational philosophy with older adults, and philosophy for children.
Collaborating with the National High School Ethics Bowl to design and administer programs that promote moral and civic education in schools across the country. Our recent collaborative efforts include NHSEBBridge (a program that brings the Ethics Bowl activity and underlying deliberative pedagogy to under-resourced schools), pedagogical workshops on NHSEBAcademy, and an empirical assessment of Ethics Bowl’s impact.
Public-Facing Writing
Deliberating Across the Lifespan” in Roberta Israeloff & Karen Mizell (eds.), The Ethics Bowl Way: Answering Questions, Questioning Answers, and Creating Ethical Communities (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)
“Ethics Bowl and Democratic Deliberation”
(APA Syllabus Showcase, Mar. 2022)
(with Alex Richardson) “Looking for a better way to disagree this election season? Look no further than your local high school” (EducationNC)
Some of my outreach and public philosophy efforts at UNC are highlighted in the posts linked below:
- Philosophical Dialogue and Reflective Practice for Juvenile Education Services (UNC Philosophy & North Carolina Department of Public Safety)
- UNC Philosophy Seeks Wisdom Across the Ages (Carolina Center for Public Service)
- Dialogue and Transformation: Bringing Philosophy to Juvenile Justice Centers in North Carolina (College of Arts & Sciences)
- Educational Ethics in Pandemic Times (Parr Center for Ethics)
- Intergenerational Philosophy and the History of Philosophy (Society for Classical Studies)
- Philosophy as Public Service (The Well)
- UNC Philosophy & National High School Ethics Bowl Partnership Brings Ethics to Under-Resourced Schools (DailyNous)
- UNC Philosophy Department Helps Educate Community during the Pandemic (The Daily Tar Heel).
Public Philosophy in Graduate School
University of Pennsylvania
As a doctoral student at Penn I was awarded the inaugural Provost’s Graduate Academic Engagement Fellowship to design and teach a new Academically Based Community Service course entitled Public Philosophy & Civic Engagement. You can read more about my fellowship activities here, here, here, and here. I was also an active member of Penn’s Project for Philosophy for the Young (P4Y).
Penn’s Project for Philosophy for the Young (P4Y)
As a member of Penn P4Y I helped expand the breadth of P4Y outreach opportunities, and over the years the number of Penn students involved has grown considerably. The program now has active projects in several primary and secondary schools across the city of Philadelphia, and range from facilitating after-school philosophy clubs to coaching ethics bowl teams. Some examples include:
- Philadelphia Regional Ethics Bowl
- Middle School Philosophy at Benjamin B. Comegys School
- Philosophy & Film at Penn Alexander
- Philosophy Club at Philadelphia Futures
In January 2020 I co-organized Penn P4Y’s inaugural APA affiliated group session with a panel centered around the theme ‘Models of Dialogue between the Academy and the Community’, which invited questions about the ethical dimensions of and effective strategies for philosophizing with children. The panel was composed of Janice Moskalik (Seattle University), Megan Jane Laverty (Teachers College, Columbia University), and Wendy C. Turgeon (St. Joseph’s College). Topics included the threat of epistemic injustice in communities of inquiry with children, tools for effective facilitating, the centrality of listening, and historical models for the norms that govern authentic, just, and truth-oriented philosophical relationships.
Netter Center for Community Partnerships
1. Phil 148: Public Philosophy and Civic Engagement
This Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course forged a new community partnership between Penn and Shoemaker High School in order to integrate ethical and moral reflection into the 12th-grade civics and economics curriculum, and to encourage the undergraduates to reflect on the value and importance of public philosophy within the discipline. I worked with Penn undergraduates to facilitate discussions with Shoemaker students on a range of topics, including duties to the poor, inequality, collective action problems, epistemic injustice, and prisons & punishment. Penn President Amy Gutmann visited our seminar to discuss deliberative democracy and the place of community engagement in the mission of our university. This course is one example of my ongoing efforts to integrate philosophical content into existing pre-college curricula, and to use experiential learning as an opportunity to reflect on the proper aims of education.
2. Phil 249: Philosophy of Education, Teaching Philosophy in Middle Schools
In Fall 2018 I served as Karen Detlefsen’s teaching assistant for this ABCS course which aimed at developing curricula and lesson plans for delivery at Benjamin B. Comegys School in West Philadelphia. One of my primary tasks was to conduct research into philosophical pedagogy in middle schools, and to present this material to the Penn undergrads who were designing lesson plans. I learned that without any jargon or elaborate theories, folks of all ages immediately recognize that philosophy is already part and parcel of their thinking about the world. Moreover, the insights and points of view provided by these young philosophers allow us to look anew at philosophy, which, in its academic form, has been informed by too narrow a segment of the human population for too long.
Why Outreach?
1. Representation: I am committed to rectifying the representation problem in academia and to cultivating spaces of inquiry for folks who have not been given the opportunity to think about philosophy in an intentional way. As a first generation Cuban-American, I recognize the urgent need to amplify diverse voices in our profession, especially voices that can expand the breadth of philosophical inquiry in new and critical ways—whether that takes the form of encouraging marginalized voices to enter the discipline down the road, or by giving those voices a platform in our professional discourse.
2. Respect: I believe we owe community members the opportunity to be exposed to philosophical thinking, and we owe them the opportunity to cultivate the habits of mind that will empower them to reflect upon and pursue their own conception of the good life and to ponder life’s biggest questions. This is a way of respecting their dignity as persons and a way of affording them equal standing in our ‘democracy of discussion’. In this way outreach in philosophy plays a vital role in promoting a democratic and egalitarian culture.
3. Recovery: Socrates spent his days conversing and inquiring with folks from all walks of life. And throughout most of our discipline’s history, philosophers have recognized the importance of preserving a way of communicating about and doing philosophy that is accessible and attractive to a wider, non-specialist audience. Sometimes rooted in a belief in the usefulness of philosophy for solving real-world problems, or a desire to share the transformative potential of philosophical reflection with others, or democratic ideals of public deliberation, this is a simple truth that is easily forgotten in our increasingly siloed and specialized education system.
About Me 