MRMJJ Presidential Professor
University of Pennsylvania
Sigal Ben-Porath is the MRMJJ University Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is also a member of the philosophy and the political science departments, and the faculty director of the SNF Paideia Program for Civic Dialogue. Ben-Porath is interested in democratic theory and practice, and studies the ways institutions like schools and colleges can sustain and advance democracy.
She has held appointments as a fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values, The Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Her recent books are Cancel Wars: How Universities Can Foster Free Speech, Promote Inclusion, and Renew Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Free Speech on Campus (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), and Citizenship Under Fire: Democratic Education in Times of Conflict (Princeton University Press, 2008). She chaired Penn's Committee on Open Expression 2015-2019, and she serves on the boards of the Teachers Institute of Philadelphia, Middlebury’s Conflict Transformation Center, and Penn’s Project for Philosophy for the Young. Over the past decade, she has been offering guidance to college campuses on policy development and responses to controversies surrounding speech. Ben-Porath earned her Ph.D. in political philosophy from Tel Aviv University in 2000.
Saturday, February 17, 2024
3:30 PM – 5:00 PM MST