MICHELE mOODY-aDAMS
Philosopher & pROFESSOR
Marshall Scholar, Class of 1978 (Somerville College at Oxford)
“If we don’t have room in the 21st century for the idea that a person’s political commitments can be complicated, I don’t know what we have room for… I don’t want to live in a world like that. I want to live in a world where I can be surprised, because people really are complicated and surprising.”
- Michele Moody-Adams
PHILOSOPHY & SOCIAL CHANGE
Michele Moody-Adams is the author of Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture and Philosophy. Her scholarship is focused on academic freedom, equal educational opportunity and moral progress. She is a Joseph Strauss Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory at Columbia University. Between July 1, 2009, and September 2011, she served as Dean of Columbia College and Vice President for Undergraduate Education at Columbia University. She was the first woman and first African-American to hold the post. Before Columbia, she taught at Cornell University, where she was Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Director of the Program on Ethics and Public Life. She has also taught at Wellesley College, the University of Rochester, and Indiana University, where she served as an Associate Dean. Her research focuses on ethics, political philosophy, the philosophy of law, and the history of philosophy. She has published on equality and social justice, moral psychology and virtues, and the philosophical implications of gender and race. In 2021, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.