The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY) , New York, NY
Fordham University School of Law, New York, NY
The College of New Jersey, Ewing, NJ
Environmental Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Philosophy of Law, Pragmatism, History of Philosophy
Title: Environmental Transformative Justice: Responding to Ecocide
Advisor: Omar Dahbour
Committee: Jeffrey Bluestein, Michael Menser, and Charles Mills
General Description: Combining the frameworks of Transitional Justice and Environmentalism into what I define as environmental transformative justice, this dissertation attempts to devise the normatively appropriate sociopolitical and juridical responses to intentional acts of environmental destruction, more specifically delineate what is owed to those who have been displaced and have had their way of life destroyed via ecocide. *(Dissertation abstract included at end of CV)
"Rorty's Public-Private Distinction as a Pragmatic Tool" Contemporary Pragmatism, Vol. 15, No. 4, Winter 2018.
"Theorizing Common but Differentiated Responsibility for Environmental Harms"
"Review of Alexander Douglas, Spinoza and Dutch Cartesianism" The Philosophical Forum, Vol. XLVII, No. 1, Spring 2016.
"Degrading Our Environment: Western Philosophy and Man's Separation from Nature" (OlioNote, Spring 2017)
Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law, Volume XIV (2008-2009).
"Applying a Rawlsian Constructivist Framework to Overcoming Injustice of Environmental Destruction"
"The Case of the Privileged Victim: A Defense of Non-Ideal Theory"
Baruch College (CUNY), New York, NY
Adjunct Lecturer (sole instructor), August 2014 - Present
Instructed three courses of Global Ethical Theory PHIL 1700; three courses of Environmental Law, Policy; Ethics PHIL 3200; two courses of Environmental Ethics PHIL 3202; five courses of Major Issues in Philosophy PHIL 1500, and two courses of Political Philosophy 3232 (class sizes between 14-40 students).
Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), New York, NY
Adjunct Lecturer (sole instructor), August 2017 - Present
Instructed three courses of Ethics for Department of Social Science (class size between 30-35 students).
Marymount Manhattan College, New York, NY
Adjunct Lecturer (sole instructor), August 2018 - Present
Instructed two courses of Environmental Ethics (class sizes between 14-16 students).
Hunter College (CUNY)
Teaching Assistant Position, August 2014 - May 2015
Instructed three discussions sections of Introduction to Philosophy PHIL 1010 for Justin Garson and three discussion section of Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method PHIL 1700 for James Freeman (class size between 6-30 students).
"Fundamiddlism: Person-Dependent Metaphysics," The 21st Annual Philosophy Graduate Student Conference in Remembrance of May 4th, Kent State University, March 2015.
"Rawls, Transitional Justice, and Socioeconomic Inequality," State, Economy, and Inequality Political Science Graduate Conference, University of Pennsylvania, February 2016.
"Transitional Justice and Socioeconomic Inequality," The 2nd IIF-UNAM Philosophy Graduate Conference, National Autonomous University of Mexico, March 2016.
"Rawls, Transitional Justice, and Socioeconomic Inequality," 2016 Loyola Philosophy Graduate Conference on Economics, Power, and Human Rights, Loyola University Chicago, October 2016.
"Man's Separation from Nature and Where to Go from Here," Strand Bookstore, June 2017.
"Democracy without Truth,"" Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) part of The Great Experiment: Questioning Democracy Lecturer Series, February 2018.
Social and Political Philosophy Courses:
Environmental Philosophy Courses:
History of Philosophy Courses:
Distribution Requirements:
Jaffe and Asher, LLP, New York, NY
Associate Attorney Head of Training, March 2011 - August 2014
Developed training program and instructed new hires. Classes covered various job functions, including statutory and regulatory compliance in multiple areas of law.
ExamKrackers, New York, NY
LSAT Instructor, August 2010 - March 2011
Taught classes ranging from 5-20 undergraduate students. Marketed product by visiting universities and giving preview demonstrations (mini-lectures) to attract potential clients.
My dissertation's central objective is to normatively devise ethically appropriate sociopolitical and juridical responses to ecocide (i.e., grave environmental harm). More specifically, the work seeks to philosophically engage the ethical question of what is owed to human societies that are displaced due to intentional environmental destruction.
The motivation behind the project stems from the lack of academic research (excluding a pocket of recent analysis of the international community’s obligation to assist ‘climate refugees’ -- a subset of people displaced due to environmental destruction) involving the question: “What ought to be afforded victims of environmental harm?” The dearth of scholarship is surprising, considering growing global concerns, vis-à-vis accelerating rates of environmental degradation, which if allowed to continue, will generate wide-ranging national and international environmental crises and disasters in the twenty-first century and beyond.
Thus, the dissertation attempts to remedy this situation by bringing environmental issues under the purview of the philosophical species of justice known as Transitional Justice. The novelty of such an approach is its emphasis that ‘social transformation’ rather than merely ‘correcting the harm done’ or ‘restoring the status quo’ is necessary for overcoming these kinds of wrongs because absent social change, the conditions that reinforce, entrench, and reproduce these sorts of injustices remain in place.
Since the focus is on transforming communities’ relationships and interactions with their environment, instead of simply repairing the damage from past injuries, the dissertation offers a full account of what I call environmental transformative justice that specifies the context in which it is operative, determines its ideal aims, offers guidance on how to pursue these aims, and identifies actors’ responsibilities for pursuing these aims. The hope is to provide post-ecocide communities insight and guidance on how to best remodel, alter, and remove (pre)existing conditions responsible for generating wrong(s); while correcting the harm(s) victims suffered.
To this end, the first chapter establishes the circumstance of environmental transformative justice, in that it delineated the particular social settings that trigger the normative concerns to which environmental transformative justice is responsive. It achieves this by illustrating normatively relevant ways that the wrongs of ecocide fall within the purview of Transitional Justice due to the harm suffered (i.e., social death and loss of vital interests due to intentional environmental destruction) and the manner in which the harm occurred (i.e., direct, indirect, or negligent state action).
The second chapter attempts to establish the full class of actors that have a role to play in overcoming the injustice of these circumstances. It seeks to develop a conception of responsibility that is persuasive, politically useful, and reasonably acceptable to the parties involved, while assisting in countering inaccurate and misleading narratives that disguise accountability (both over-inclusively and under-inclusively) for ecocide. Essentially, the chapter argues that to adequately discharge responsibility actors must engage in shared public activity (i.e., political action) to oppose, resist, and alter the background institutions and practices generating the cases of ecocide under discussion.
The third chapter begins by employing a constructivist approach to determine the ideal principles of environmental transformative justice. Second, it applies a comparative justice approach to establish how to proceed when enacting environmental transformative justice measures. Finally, the concluding section demonstrates ways in which Transitional Justice mechanisms (e.g., criminal tribunals, truth commissions, public apologies, pardons, lustration, memorialization, reparations, and constitutional conventions) can assist in furthering environmental aims (i.e., promoting ecological sustainability, preservation, and restoration).