Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics

• Graduate Fellow, 2009-2010

Joshua Cherniss is a PhD candidate in the Department of Government at Harvard. He is interested in the history of political thought and in contemporary political and moral theory.  His dissertation draws on the history of political thought, political history and moral philosophy to argue that both liberal and "anti-liberal" conceptions of politics can be understood as advancing claims about the ethics proper to political action; and aims to show how past liberal theorists have developed a distinctively liberal account of political ethics - and how contemporary proponents of liberalism can develop it further.  Joshua received his BA in Political Science from Yale University, and is currently completing a DPhil in Modern History at Oxford University. At Harvard, he has served as a teaching fellow in courses on the history of modern political philosophy, American political thought and constitutional law, and political and moral philosophy. He has also taught the history of political and social theory at Yale and Oxford.

• Graduate Fellow, 2009-2010

Ryan Doerfler is a Ph.D. candidate in the philosophy department.  He is interested in question about truth and realism generally, though he is especially interested in those questions as they arise in discussions of evaluative discourse (in particular, discourse about matters of taste).  Additionally/relatedly, Ryan spends a lot of time thinking about the nature of indeterminacy and constraints on the possibility of disagreement (again, especially within in the evaluative domain).  Prior to coming to Harvard, Ryan received a B.A. in philosophy from Wake Forest University.

• Graduate Fellow, 2009-2010

Marie Gryphon is a PhD candidate in public policy at Harvard University.  Her disciplinary emphasis is moral and political philosophy with a special interest in Rawlsian constructivist methodology and libertarian views.  Her research focuses on the nature of justice, the extent of a citizen's obligation to obey the law, and how these fundamental issues bear on the applied field of legal ethics.  She is particularly interested in the special ethical challenges faced by lawyers who work in illegitimate states.  Marie holds a JD from the University of Washington School of law and a BA in political science from the University of Washington.

• Graduate Fellow, 2009-2010

Sean Ingham is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government. His primary interests are in normative democratic theory, theories of justice, and social choice theory. His dissertation considers the implications of social choice theoretic results on majority rule for democratic theory, in particular the implications of results purporting to show that the notion of the "will of the majority" is incoherent. Sean holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has served as a teaching fellow for introductory courses in political philosophy, game theory and social choice theory and was a Graduate Research Fellow for the Project on Justice, Welfare, and Economics in 2008-2009.

• Graduate Fellow, 2009-2010

Nataliya Palatnik is a PhD student in the Department of Philosophy. Her interests lie in practical aspects of classical German philosophy (primarily Kant's moral and political philosophy, but also the ethical thought of Fichte and Hegel) and in the way it informs contemporary discussions in moral, social and political philosophy. Her current research focuses on the elements of Kant's practical thought that highlight its crucial, yet often overlooked, social aspects. She holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from Lviv National University of Ukraine and an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. At Harvard, she has served as a course assistant for the graduate seminar in contemporary Kantian ethical theory and as a teaching fellow for the human rights course in the Core Curriculum.

• Graduate Fellow, 2009-2010

Paul Schofield is a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy.  He is interested in moral philosophy, political philosophy, and action theory.  His dissertation will develop a theory of group action, and will argue that political bodies are best understood as collective agents.  Schofield holds a BA from the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and an MA in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  At Harvard he has been a teaching fellow for courses on justice, social protest, and race.