Biography::
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Kory P. Schaff
Curriculum Vitae

I was born and raised in Billings, MT with the benefit of attending a good public high school where learning was encouraged, and money existed for extracurricular activities like debate programs and student newspapers. I attended North Central College in the suburbs of Chicago where my life underwent important transformation. I started out as an active Young Republican from Montana; four years later I finished an honors thesis defending the moral critique of Marx's theory of exploitation. This was due, in part, to three major influences, a faculty committed to interdisciplinary problem solving, an honors program called the History of Ideas, and coming out as a gay man. It was the famous words of Socrates in Plato's Apology that motivated me personally and politically from that point forward:  “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

The experience of coming out in college occurred while I was also acquiring a critical view of the world, which created major waves for me intellectually. Bernard Williams once remarked, "There is no path back from reflection," and I have experienced this truth first hand. On a campus of about 1,000 students, I was virtually the only openly gay individual, which was an intimidating and frustrating experience at times. I confronted the issue of homophobia by organizing groups to host campus forums on diversity and tolerance, wrote editorials responding to letters expressing the sentiment "hate the sin, love the sinner," and generally tried to change people's attitudes which were based on distortions, stereotypes, and religious intolerance. There were certainly painful and anxious moments during this time of my life, but having an alternative perspective in a community with some small-minded people gave me great motivation to pursue my educational goals.

In 1996 I graduated summa cum laude as a College Scholar with a B.A. in Philosophy, Political Science, and Literature. I was mainly interested in social and political problems in the history of ideas, but approached these problems paying attention to both theoretical and empirical issues. In short, I was thinking and learning in an interdisciplinary framework that could be considered a traditional or “liberal” education! I believed my purpose was to educate people to be more independent and critical thinkers, so I decided to continue my own education in graduate school.

I took one year off to work and travel before entering the Ph.D. program the Department of Philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago to pursue my interests in social and political philosophy. I defended my M.A. thesis on "Hegel's Economic Thought' in 1999 with honors. At Loyola I discovered excellent political philosophers, critical theorists, and outstanding teachers who encouraged the development of my own research and intellectual interests. At the time there were significant financial problems at Loyola, and severe mismanagement of the university was forcing cutbacks in education and research. I was president of the Association of Graduate Students in Philosophy that year, and spent my last year at Loyola protesting outside board meetings and campaigning with Save Loyola, a massive faculty/student/alumni and staff movement that resulted in the single largest recruitment of faculty to the American Association of University Professors, shared governance at Loyola with the Faculty Council, and the resignation of the university's president.

I am also actively involved in changing U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba. In the summer of 1998 I first traveled there to attend the annual conference of North American Social Scientists and Philosophers at the University of Havana, and have returned several times since to give papers and lectures on work and civil society, U.S. and Cuban relations, and globalization. I have discussed the issues of U.S. foreign policy and Cuban society with friends, professionals, and people on the streets in Cuba and have concluded that our policies toward its wonderful people need to be changed.

The economic embargo against Cuba is a forty-year political failure, and the misguided Cuban American political lobby and retrenchment of this policy by the Bush administration are wildly utopian in their belief that continuing this policy will undermine Castro's regime. Continuing the embargo only reinforces false beliefs about Cuban social reality and the vision of its people for a just society. Recent developments in the U.S. Congress, including the lobby efforts by farmers and agricultural trade organizations have begun to dissolve our political will to continue this failed foreign policy. Unhappily, Republican leadership, in direct contradiction to the expressed will of both Congress and the people it represents, continue to manipulate legislative votes that would repeal the travel ban for American citizens wanting to experience Cuba for themselves. For more information about these issues, please visit our End the Embargo project and www.cubacentral.com.

In 1999 and 2000 I was the recipient of a fellowship from the German American Academic Council to attend an institute over two-summers on "The Economics and Politics of Labor in Advanced Societies" at M.I.T. and the Wissenschaftzentrum fur Sozialforschung in Berlin. The institute brought together 20 economists, sociologists, and political scientists from the U.S. and Germany to collaborate on research addressing the problems of labor markets. I was the lone philosopher of this group, and worked on a collaborative paper titled "Work and Citizenship" with two other fellows.

I moved to the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego in August 2000 to continue my research and thinking about these issues. I defended my Ph.D. thesis on "Work, Freedom, and Community:  Hegel's Normative Economics" in June 2005. Here’s an abstract of the dissertation if you are interested. Richard Arneson and Michael Hardimon co-chaired my dissertation committee.

My area of specialization is in moral and political philosophy and German Idealism, particularly Hegel (although my historical interests range from Kant, Fichte, and Marx through Nietzsche and critical theory). My areas of competence include ethics, philosophy of economics, philosophy of law and social policy, Marx and critical theory, Continental philosophy, feminist and queer theory, and Aristotle.

In the Spring of 2003 I was a visiting scholar at the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences at the London School of Economics, where I worked on research, took a seminar on social choice theory, finished a draft of my dissertation, and studied problems of economic and social scientific methodology. In particular, I am interested in problems of objectivity in economic methodology, the foundations and limitations of rational choice theory, and the positive/normative distinction in economics. My own research addresses the development of normative economics as a bridge between political philosophy and positive economics.

I have received a tenure-track appointment starting in August 2005 as Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA where I will teach in the areas of political philosophy, ethics, German Idealism, and critical theory. Occidental College is one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country with a long tradition of promoting diversity and progressive politics, and I am excited to join the community of scholars there.

I enjoy traveling around the world and visiting my "inner circle" of friends that live everywhere from San Francisco, Chicago, Washington DC, New York, London, and Paris. I also spin dark and progressive house music in my spare time, go clubbing, and hope to dj at clubs in the LA area. My daily therapy is provided by my demanding and intelligent dog, Jena.

Participating in the Save Loyola campaign and following politics closely (a little too closely some people believe) has convinced me that the defining problem of the future is the democratic control of market institutions. Therefore, the central topic of my research agenda is work, but it is my personal experience as a gay man that motivates me to confront domination and oppression wherever it exists.

Domination and oppression is actually a real thing. Although gay and lesbian individuals have built communities of tolerance for themselves, many social, political and legal institutions continue to distribute the benefits and burdens of citizenship unequally. This is contrary to the principle of liberal equality that is the heart and soul of freedom in a constitutional democracy. Although I am interested in the problems of self-identification in queer communities, I believe that integrating subjected minorities to be positive contributors to wider political communities beyond their borders is a key component of a long-term strategy to ensure equality and freedom.

As a teacher and scholar it is my obligation to raise awareness and promote change for the full inclusion of sexual diversity in our conceptions of families, schools, workplaces, and political institutions. Through my teaching and research I shall continue confronting these problems in higher education and society. By changing people's minds we can ensure social and political progress in which sexual orientation is no longer a legitimate basis for discriminating against individuals in housing, employment, family life, political institutions, and public office.