Political theory:

I study ancient and modern political philosophy to understand the kind of citizen a republic needs to sustain itself—and to compare that ideal to the character our contemporary institutions tend to form. To this end, I have brought Publius into conversation with modern post-liberals in Oxford Political Review to examine how a revived practice of federalism could generate moral solidarity, and I have drawn on John Stuart Mill to analyze campus free-speech culture for CNN Opinion. I am an editorial assistant at National Affairs, a magazine that applies political theory to today’s challenges.

I see political theory as a way of making explicit the rival philosophical commitments beneath everyday political disputes, which can help us approach our political opponents with more seriousness and care. So at MIT Concourse, I serve as head teaching assistant for a weekly seminar of fifty first-year students debating questions of patriotism, charter schools, and monogamy. I am also a teaching assistant for a first-year fundamental questions course on Plato and Aristotle.

I completed an independent study of Plato’s Gorgias, a dialogue about rhetoric and its proper place in politics, and spent a summer studying political theory at the Hertog Political Studies Program.