I received my doctorate from Stanford University, California, in 2004. My dissertation was entitled "The Significance of Moral Disagreement," and was supervised by Debra Satz. My doctoral dissertation was in essence the groundwork for my current research, which broadly concerns conflicts of moral conviction in liberal democratic politics. Projects in this area of research concern problems of state neutrality between conceptions of the good life, norms of public deliberation and their relation to theories of public justification, problems of compromise and legitimacy in transitional periods prior to democratic elections, the status of conscience and the relation between liberal toleration and the accommodation of dissenting minorities, and questions of moral diversity at a global level.

I was raised in South Africa and educated at Rhodes University, where I was also active in the anti-apartheid student movement.

"Religious Democracy and the Liberal Principle of Legitimacy," Philosophy & Public Affairs, 37 (2), 2009: 136-70

I argue against Rawls's claim that the liberal principle of legitimacy would be selected in the original position in addition to a democratic principle. Since a religious democracy could satisfy the democratic principle, the parties in the original position would not exclude it as illegitimate.

"Principled Compromise and the Abortion Controversy," Philosophy & Public Affairs, 33 (4), 2005: 317-48.

I argue that the only reasons for political leaders to forge moral compromises with opponents are pragmatic, even in the context of reasonable moral disagreements such as the abortion controversy.

I teach graduate seminars in three areas: distributive justice, liberal theory, and democratic theory. The seminars in distributive justice are based on John Rawls's justice as fairness and the variety of egalitarian and non-egalitarian responses to that theory. Seminars in liberal theory focus on various problems in religious and moral diversity and disagreement in a liberal society, such as religious toleration and conscientious objection. Seminars in democratic theory take up topics such as the idea of the popular will, deliberative, epistemic, and agonistic approaches to democracy, and the tension between majoritarianism and constitutionalism. These seminars are open to students in the M.A. program in Philosophy, the ASPECT Ph.D. program, and any other graduate students in related disciplines.

I teach four undegraduate courses in philosophy, three in any given year. My version of Philosophy 2304: Global Ethics usually concerns issues connected with mass violence and human rights, particularly just war theory and genocide. Philosophy 3016: Political Theory is a survey of modern political theory from Hobbes to Marx, sometimes with a few thinkers from the twentieth century included. The class usually emphasises the ascent of liberty as a basic value of legitimate government. Philosophy 4304: Social and Political Philosophy is on some or other topic in political philosophy. In the past, I've taught it as an introduction to contemporary theories of distributive justice and also on problems of ethical pluralism in liberal democracy. Philosophy 4334: Jurisprudence is a class on the philosophy of law. We usually read H.L.A. Hart's Concept of Law as well as literature on rights theory, the duty to obey the law, and theories of constitutional interpretation.

In 2007, I started a group blog for political philosophers called Public Reason. The idea behind the blog is to create a home on the internet for political philosophers to post about upcoming conferences, upload working papers, or just discuss problems in their work. We've had two reading groups on David Estlund's Democratic Authority and on Corey Brettschneider's Democratic Rights, and two semesters of political philosophy podcast symposia. The site now has well over four hundred professional political philosophers and students signed up. You can also sign up to the Public Reason facebook group.

Public Reason was inspired by other group blogs working in different areas of philosophy. These include the Garden of Forking Paths, PEA Soup, Ethics, etc., These are worth having a look at, along with Thom Brook's blog, Brian Leiter's philosophy reports, Larry Solum's legal theory blog, and Jacob T. Levy's political theory blog.