Meet the New Faculty:

Steven Wall

I grew up in North Carolina in a town about 45 minutes from Duke University, where I went to college. I remain fiercely loyal to Duke, with particular fondness for its basketball program. In college I majored in economics and philosophy, but decided to go to graduate school in political science. I enrolled in the government department at Columbia University and began studying political theory. Before too long, I realized that the really good work in political theory was not being done by political theorists, but by philosophers in philosophy departments. I eventually decided to leave Columbia for Oxford, where I hoped to get training in analytic political philosophy. I had a wonderful time at Oxford; and I eventually completed a doctoral thesis entitled "Liberalism, Perfectionism and Restraint." This thesis, with minor modifications, was published by Cambridge University Press in 1998 with the same title.

After graduate school, I had a hard time on the job market; but I eventually landed a job at Kansas State University. I was delighted to discover that the department there was surprisingly strong. But Kansas State had no graduate program and a severe teaching load. After three years at Kansas State, and a one year fellowship at Princeton, I came to Bowling Green.

With respect to my research, I have continued to work on perfectionism. This is the view that the state should not try to be neutral among different ways of life and conceptions of the good, but should instead favor valuable ones over less valuable ones. Recently, with George Klosko of the University of Virginia, I edited a collection of essays on the debate between neutralists and perfectionists entitled "Perfectionism and Neutrality: Essays in Liberal Theory." Currently, I have been working on some problems in normative democratic theory. And I also have research interests in the philosophy of law.

I travel often to New York City, where my wife works as a medical ethicist. When I am in New York, we like to go to the theatre, when we can afford to do so. We also enjoy walking in the city, and gardening at our home in New Jersey. I very much enjoy sports, both as a spectator and as a participant. And, though it has been a couple of years since I last played, I enjoy playing basketball at the gym.