Hi! I’m Tom Donahue-Ochoa. As of 1 July 2023, I'll be Assistant Professor in Political Science, Latin American, Iberian, and Latinx Studies, and the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship (CPGC). I do comparative political thought. So I study political ideas, institutions, and movements through trans-local lenses.
My work fosters collaborations with an engaged approach to thinking and acting. Hence it jumps the barriers between academe and the real world, faculty and student research, and theory and practice. In one such effort, I'm co-founding Reconnecting Theory: The Margins as Centers. In another, co-organizing with the CPGC the Transformative Sustainability Project, as well as things like the 2022 Meeting of the PA Council for International Education. And my research, teaching, and outreach employ engaged and grounded theorizing. Finally, I wrote Unfreedom for All: How The World's Injustices Harm You. It examines injustices and abolition organizing in comparative, global, and historical perspective. I’m beginning another book project on collectives as connected similarities.
My teaching interweaves real-world experience of these forces with the classroom, the desk, and the library. I've taught a range of courses across political science. At Haverford, the latter stresses public scholarship, collaborative experiential inquiry, and immersive research. I’m now contributing to that by trying out virtual exchange. In all, I’ve added some nineteen different courses to the offerings of the Tri-College Consortium. And I’ve essayed an approach to using theories that unriddles learning them and all the things you can do with them. This shows how you can boil down all theories--no matter how complex and abstract--into vivid metaphors about the objects they treat. You can thus grasp and use a difficult theory in three steps: unearth its root metaphor, inspect it, and then replant and tend it.
Curious about what political thought does? Visit my teaching page. To check out work in progress, drop by my page on academia.edu. I co-founded and regularly partake in the Tri-College Political Theory Workshop.
Before joining the Haverford community, I taught in Political Science and the Program in Ethics, Politics & Economics at Yale. I also held a postdoc in the Philosophy Institute at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). That might be the largest university in the Americas.
Book
Thomas J. Donahue-Ochoa, Unfreedom for All: How the World's Injustices Harm You (Oxford University Press, 2019)
Articles
Thomas J. Donahue-Ochoa, "Deconstructing the Divides," Journal of Social and Political Philosophy 1, 2 (2022)
Thomas J. Donahue-Ochoa, "The Untaken Turn: Transnationalism in Political Theory," Review of Politics 84, 1 (2022)
Thomas J. Donahue and Paulina Ochoa Espejo, "The analytical-Continental divide: Styles of dealing with problems," European Journal of Political Theory 15, 2 (2016)
Thomas J. Donahue, "Terrorism, Moral Conceptions, and Moral Innocence," The Philosophical Forum 44, 4 (2013)
Thomas J. Donahue, "Anthropocentrism and the Argument from Gaia Theory," Ethics & the Environment 15, 2 (2010)
Thomas J. Donahue, "Terrorism and the Types of Wrongdoing," Public Affairs Quarterly 24, 3 (2010)
Courses in Fall 2022
Development, Human Rights, and Transnational Injustices. ICPR H301 / POLS H301 Featured in Haverford Headlines. (Every Fall, 2022-2014).
Political Ideologies in a World of Identities. POLS H312 / PEAC H312 (Also Spring 2020)
Courses Taught in the Tri-College Consortium
The Ethics, Politics, and Economics of the Earth: From an Oceanic Point of View. POLS H278/ENVS H278. (Fall 2021)
Introduction to Political Theory: In Translocal and Comparative Perspective. POLS H171. (Spring 2021)
Contemporary Political Ideas amid Global Transformations. POLS H 318. (Fall 2020)
Injustices and Resistance. POLS H207. (Spring 2022, Spring 2020)
International Law and the Laws of Nations. POLS H317 / PEAC H317. (Spring 2022, Spring 2019)
The Elements of Injustice: Oppression and Personal Harms. POLS H207. (Spring 2019)
Introduction to Political Theory: Ideologies and the Struggle to Control Authority. POLS H171. (Spring 2018)
Comparative and Transnational Studies: From Kuala Lumpur to Kansas City. ICPR H271 / POLS H 271. (Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Fall 2019, Fall 2018 )
Thinking across Borders: Comparative and Transnational Studies. POLS H324. (Spring 2018)
What We Owe to Groups: The Ethics and Politics of Collective Life. POLS H319. (Fall 2017)
The Contest over Quality: The Ethics and Politics of Craft and Design. ICPR H374 / POLS H374. Featured in Haverblog's "Cool Classes" series. (Spring 2017)
Globalization: Ethics, Politics & Economics. POLS H161. (Spring 2020, Spring 2017)
International Law: History, Structure, Principles. POLS H317 / PEAC H317 (Fall 2016)
The Power of Ideas: Political Ideologies. POLS H312 / PEAC H312. (Spring 2016)
Ends and Means: Moral Choices in Politics. POLS H274. Featured in Haverblog's "Cool Classes" series (Spring 2016, Spring 2015)
Majorities and Minority Rights: Ethics & Economics. POLS H305. (Spring 2016, Spring 2015)
Injustices: Human & Animal. POLS H207. (Fall 2015)
The Earth: Ethics, Politics & Economics. POLS H278/ ENVS H278. Featured in Haverblog's "Cool Classes" series. (Spring 2019, Fall 2014)
Education
Ph.D., The Johns Hopkins University
A. M., The University of Chicago
A. B., Colby College