I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Georgia State University. I earned my PhD in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh. Before studying at Pitt, I earned my JD from Yale Law School. During the 2021-2022 academic year, I was a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Ethics and Public Affairs of Tulane University’s Murphy Institute.

My research interests are primarily in social and political philosophy and legal theory. Throughout much of my work, I aim to show that Kant’s theory of right has much to contribute to a great many contemporary discussions in political and legal theory. As the foundation of his theory of right, Kant offers a distinctive conception of the right to freedom as a right to direct one’s own will in the external world consistently with others’ rights to do the same. With this conception in mind, we can rethink what it means to preserve and protect individual freedom. Aside from my work on Kantian political philosophy, I also work on Marx, private law (particularly tort and property law), and disability rights.

In Freedom from the Market, the manuscript I am currently writing, I argue that respecting the right to freedom requires both securing citizens’ access to basic resources and limiting inequalities. Further, I argue that respecting the right to freedom requires rejecting capitalism and searching instead for a system of exchange that allows democratic control of societal economic production. While freedom is often invoked to argue for the free market and against socioeconomic rights, Freedom from the Market shows that freedom can instead be a powerful tool in refuting such arguments.

The picture above is “Heavy Circles” by Vassily Kandinsky. It is on view at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, CA–my very favorite museum.