Thomas Donahue | Haverford College

Education

Ph.D., The Johns Hopkins University
A. M., The University of Chicago
A. B., Colby College

Biography

Dr. Thomas J. Donahue-Ochoa is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department, Independent College Programs, and the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship. Before joining Haverford in 2014, he taught in the Program in Ethics, Politics & Economics at Yale and held a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in the Institute for Philosophical Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

A political philosopher, Donahue's research examines the structure of injustices in global, comparative, and historical perspective; and the relationships among moral principles and political and economic theories. Some of his research is published in European Journal of Political Theory, The Philosophical Forum, Public Affairs Quarterly, Ethics & the Environment, and Nexos. His book, Unfreedom for All: How The World's Injustices Harm You, has just been published by Oxford University Press. You can read a precis and abstracts of various chapters by clicking here. He is beginning another book project on collective identities.

In his teaching, Donahue has added fifteen different courses to the offerings of the Tri-College Consortium. He has also pioneered a new approach to teaching students to learn and use theories. This approach holds that all theories--no matter how complex and abstract--can ultimately be boiled down to simple metaphors about the objects they treat. Hence one can master a difficult theory by articulating its basic metaphor, and then building up from there.

If you are curious about what political philosophy is, visit Donahue's homepage. To check out Donahue's work in progress, visit his page on academia.edu. He is a founding member and regular participant in the Tri-College Political Theory Workshop.

Book

Thomas J. Donahue-Ochoa, Unfreedom for All: How the World's Injustices Harm You (Oxford University Press, 2019)

Peer-reviewed Articles

Thomas J. Donahue and Paulina Ochoa Espejo, "The analytical-Continental divide: Styles of dealing with problems," European Journal of Political Theory 15, 2 (2016): 138-154

Thomas J. Donahue, "Terrorism, Moral Conceptions, and Moral Innocence," The Philosophical Forum 44, 4 (2013): 413-435

Thomas J. Donahue, "Anthropocentrism and the Argument from Gaia Theory," Ethics & the Environment 15, 2 (2010): 51-77