Shmulik Nili

Date
-
Location
Encina Hall West, Room 400 (GSL)
Speaker

Shmulik Nili, Assistant Professor of Political Theory, Northwestern University

 

 

Biography

Shmulik Nili's current work focuses on three related themes. First, he is interested in how we should think about the collective agency of "the sovereign people," both as a matter of abstract philosophy and as a matter of concrete public policy (see The people's duty, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press). Second, he explores what political philosophy can contribute when facing obvious moral failures in public policy. Finally, his current work also examines the moral value of integrity, whether applied to ordinary people, to authoritarian demagogues, or to collective institutions. His inquiries into these three themes started with a focus on corruption issues. In particular, he was interested in global corruption related to the "resource curse" and in philosophical questions that this "curse" raises about public property and democracy, as well as about the practical tasks of political philosophy. More recently, he has sought to connect his global theory arguments to domestic politics, paying special attention to morally fraught dynamics in various developing countries, in the United States, and in his native Israel.