Writing

Selected Publications

Books

Distant Strangers: Ethics, Psychology, and Global Poverty, Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Leveling the Playing Field: Justice, Politics, and College Admissions (with Robert K. Fullinwider), Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.

Democracy and the Mass Media (editor), New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Articles

"Lies, Bullshit, False Beliefs, Ignorance, Skepticism: Some Epistemic Fallout of Our Current Political Times," Political Epistemology, Volume 1 (2021).

“Autonomy, Obedience, and Manifest Illegality,” Graham Parsons and Mark Wilson, eds., Walzer and War: Reading Just and Unjust Wars Today (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

“Against Life and Death Sentences,” University of Tsukuba (Tokyo, Japan) Law Journal 28 (2020).

“Effective Altruism: A Consequentialist Case Study” (uncorrected page proofs), in Douglas Portmore, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Consequentialism (Oxford: Oxford, forthcoming 2020).

“Against Life Without Parole,” Washington University Jurisprudence Review 11 (2019).

“Between Rights and Gifts: A Comment on Human Rights, Global Ethics, and the Ordinary Virtues, by Michael Ignatieff,” Journal of Law and International Relations 13:1 (2017).

“How U.S. Prisons Violate Three Principles of Justice,” Aeon, September 19, 2016.

“Peter Singer’s Extremely Altruistic Heirs,” The New Republic, November 30, 2015.

“Responsibility for Global Poverty,” in Ludger Heidbrink, Janina Sombetzki, and Claus Langbehn, eds., Handbook of Responsibility (Springer, 2017).

“For Your Own Good: Coercing, Nudging, Informing,” Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy 14 (2016).

“Altruism,” in Roger MacGinty and Jen Peterson, eds., The Handbook of Humanitarian Action (London: Routledge, 2015).

“Ending Global Poverty: Gain Without Much Pain,” Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly, February 2014.

“Paternalism, Manipulation, Freedom, and the Good,” Eldar Shafir, ed., Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).

“Oughts and Cans: Badness, Wrongness, and the Limits of Ethical Theory,” Philosophical Topics 38 (2010).

“Negative Duties, Positive Duties, and the ‘New Harms’,” Ethics 120 (April 2010).

“Is Pure Altruism Possible?,” The New York Times, October 19, 2010. Reprinted in Peter Catapano and Simon Critchley, eds., The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments (Norton/Liveright, 2015); Peter Catapano and Simon Critchley, Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments (Norton/Liveright, 2017).

"Negative Duties, Positive Duties, and the 'New Harms'," Ethics 120 (2010).

“Is the War Convention a Convention?,” Proceedings of the conference on asymmetric warfare, University of Belgrade, 2009.

“Are There Any Basic Rights?,” in Charles Beitz and Robert Goodin, eds., Global Basic Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

“Famine, Affluence, and Psychology,” Singer Under Fire, Jeffrey Schaler, ed. (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 2009).

“What Is Charity?,” Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly 29 no. 3-4 (Summer/Fall 2009).

“How to Judge Soldiers Whose Cause Is Unjust,” in David Rodin and Henry Shue, eds., Just and Unjust Warriors: The Moral and Legal Status of Soldiers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

“About Altruism,” Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly 28 (2008).

“Leveling the Playing Field: A Response to Brighouse and Strike” (with Robert K. Fullinwider), Theory and Research in Education 4 (2006).

“Presidential Dirty Hands,” in Terry Price and J. Thomas Wren, eds., Presidential Leadership (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

“Some Central Problems of Just War Theory,” in R. Joseph Hoffmann, ed., Just War and Jihad (Prometheus Books, 2006).

“Absence and the Unfond Heart: Why People Are Less Giving Than They Might Be,” in The Ethics of Assistance: Morality and the Distant Needy, edited by Deen Chatterjee (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

“Preemption and Exceptionalism in U.S. Foreign Policy: Precedent and Example in the International Arena,” in Thomas G. Weiss, Margaret E. Crahan, and John Goering, eds., Wars on Terrorism and Iraq: Human Rights, Unilateralism, and U.S. Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2004).

“How the Academically Rich Get Richer,” Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly 24, no. 4, Fall 2004.

“Media Ethics,” Blackwell Companion to Applied Ethics, edited by R.G. Frey and Christopher Wellman (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003).

“The Ethics of Retaliation,” in Verna Gehring, ed., War After September 11 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002).

“Journalism,” Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2d ed. (New York: Routledge, 2001).

“Freedom of the Press,” Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2d ed. (New York: Routledge, 2001).

“Beyond the Public Journalism Controversy,” in Civil Society, Democracy, and Civic Renewal, ed. Robert Fullinwider (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998).

“Objectivity in Reporting,” in The Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics (San Diego: Academic Press, 1998).

“How Liberal Can Nationalism Be?,” Philosophical Forum 28 (Fall-Winter 1996-97); reprinted in Ronald Beiner, ed., Theorizing Nationalism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999).

“The Will to Truth: A Reply to Novick,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 560 (1998).

“Consuming Because Others Consume,” Social Theory and Practice 22 (1996).

“Nationalism, For and (Mainly) Against,” in The Morality of Nationalism, edited by Jeff McMahan and Robert McKim (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

“Objectivity in Reporting,” in The Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics (San Diego: Academic Press, 1998).

“Counting Race and Ethnicity: Options for the 2000 Census” (with Suzanne Bianchi, Robert Wachbroit, and David Wasserman), Report from the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy 17, Summer 1997.

“The Merits of Merit” (with David Luban), Report from the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy 17, Winter/Spring 1997.

“What Are Codes of Ethics For?,” in Codes of Ethics and the Professions, edited by Margaret Coady and Sidney Bloch (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1996).

“Moral Certainty,” Philosophy 69 (1994).

“War, Innocence, and the Doctrine of Double Effect,” Philosophical Studies 74 (1994).

“Migration, Immigration, and Refugees,” Encyclopedia of Bioethics (New York: Macmillan, 1995).

“Population Policy and the Clash of Cultures,” Report from the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy 13 (1993).

“Objectivity and Its Enemies,” The Responsive Community, Winter 1991-92.

“Racism in the Head, Racism in the World,” Report from the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy 12 (1992).

“In Defense of Objectivity Revisited,” in James Curran and Michael Gurevitch, eds., Mass Media and Society 3d ed. (London: Edward Arnold, 2000).

“Truth, Neutrality, and Conflict of Interest,” Business and Professional Ethics 9 (1990).

“The Role of the Media in Risk Communication” (with Douglas MacLean), in R. Kasperson and P.J. Stallen, eds., Communicating Risk to the Public: International Perspectives (Dordrecht: Holland: D. Reidel, 1990).

“The Abortion Dilemma: Is There a Middle Ground?,” Report from the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, Spring 1990.

“The Politics of Character and the Character of Journalism,” Barone Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy (Harvard University) Discussion Paper, 1989.

“Is Good News No News?” (with Douglas MacLean), Report from the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, Fall 1988.

“Foundations and Limits of Freedom of the Press,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 16 (1987).

“On Alternatives to Industrial Flight,” in Gertrude Ezorsky, ed., Moral Rights in the Workplace (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986).

“The Right, the All Right, and the Good,” Yale Law Journal 92 (1983). A review essay of Samuel, Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism.

“Within the Pale: Aliens, Illegal Aliens, and Equal Protection,” Pittsburgh Law Review 44 (1983), Symposium Issue on Immigration and the Constitution.

“Subjectivism as Moral Weakness Projected,” Philosophical Quarterly 33 (1983).

“Mexican Migration and U.S. Policy: A Guide for the Perplexed,” in Henry Shue and Peter G. Brown, eds., The Border That Joins (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982).

“The Moral Equivalence of Action and Omission,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 8, New Essays in Ethics and Public Policy, 1982.

“National Boundaries and Moral Boundaries: A Cosmopolitan View,” in Peter G. Brown and Henry Shue, eds., Boundaries: National Autonomy and Its Limits (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981), pp. 79-100.