I am a philosopher, dialogue facilitator, and violinist. I work in applied ethics and the philosophy of education, and I am the Associate Director of the Center for Ethics and Human Values at The Ohio State University.
My research addresses questions in applied ethics and the philosophy of education, many of them raised by artificial intelligence.
My applied ethics program focuses on emerging technology and activism. With Jonathan Lang, I examine what is ethically distinctive about customizable AI-generated pornography, in a paper forthcoming in The Journal of Ethics, and I am developing a taxonomy of how artificial intelligence is used, and guidelines for how it ought to be used, in research and teaching. The activism side takes up questions I first faced during my years as an organizer within the animal advocacy movement: how activists choosing among strategies under uncertainty should attend to the distribution of approaches across their movement, a framework I am extending to AI activism; the deliberative structure of two-level utilitarianism; and the animal-activist tactic of open rescue.
My philosophy of education program grew out of more than a decade of facilitating dialogues in classrooms, community centers, and universities. It develops a systematic theory of inquiry dialogue: the practice in which a group searches for the truth by collectively pursuing a central question. Its two branches, dialogue theory and Philosophy for Children, are interconnected at every level. I study what makes a question able to serve as the center of an inquiry; how noise arises in the judgments of inquirers and facilitators, and how to reduce it; and how AI tools can mitigate the distortions that degrade collective reasoning without replacing the facilitators and participants whose accountability is partly constitutive of the practice. My next major project consolidates this work into a monograph.
My goal as a teacher is located where teaching is most difficult: having students reason for themselves about genuinely contestable, and often socially controversial, questions.
When my goal is for students to understand a concept or a reading, I use active learning techniques that help them achieve understanding rather than simply telling them the answer. When it is time to explore a genuinely contestable question, I facilitate an inquiry dialogue, helping students search for answers by pushing them to reason better with arguments, examples, and evidence. Much of my work is deciding which type of dialogue a moment calls for. At the University of Wisconsin–Madison and The Ohio State University, I have taught courses on civil discourse, computing ethics, environmental ethics, business ethics, pandemic ethics, the ethics of revolution and resistance, and the theory and practice of teaching philosophy. My courses address questions that many students are afraid to discuss: free expression, abortion, animal ethics, protest and political violence, the distribution of environmental burdens.
Since 2023 I have facilitated more than ninety dialogue facilitation and pedagogy workshops, reaching over 2,000 recorded participants across Ohio State's departments, scholars programs, residence halls, and medical units, as well as outside organizations and institutions including the National League of Cities, the American Association of University Women, and Yale University. I also coach Ohio State's ethics bowl team.
I build and run dialogue programming for campuses, schools, and communities.
As Associate Director of the Center for Ethics and Human Values, I oversee programming in dialogue facilitation, outreach, and the ETHOS Fellows program. I co-developed Ohio State's university-wide civil discourse initiative Listen. Learn. Discuss. and serve on its leadership team, and I co-created and facilitated the first Buckeye Day of Dialogue, an unscripted inquiry dialogue on free speech and campus protests with topics chosen by attendees in real time. In 2026 I gave the TEDxOhioStateUniversity talk "How (not) to answer life's biggest questions," and I serve as a Physicians Coach at The James Comprehensive Cancer Center.
I am the founding director of the Philosophy For & With Children Academy, which trains students to facilitate philosophical dialogues in Columbus schools. I co-teach dialogue facilitation courses through the IAPC and PLATO, where I serve on the Board of Directors. I sit on the editorial board of Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis, and I founded Madison Public Philosophy.
I am the founding director of Philosophy Counseling and Consulting. Sessions run in person in Columbus and online.
Explore personal values and life challenges in a caring, supportive, and honest environment.
Dialogue-facilitation training for teachers and administrators, including work on highly charged, controversial issues.
Dialogue facilitation and ethics consulting for organizations.
I am a violinist with an active and eclectic career that spans styles, roles, and genres.
I studied with Zvi Zeitlin at the Eastman School of Music. I have performed with orchestras including the Madison Symphony Orchestra, the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Camerata Chicago, Orchestra Iowa, the Newark-Granville Symphony Orchestra, and the New World Symphony, with festival appearances at the Lucerne Festival Academy, the Music Academy of the West, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, and InterHarmony. New music has been a constant thread: I have played with the Columbus Ohio Discovery Ensemble, Contrary Motion, Sound Out Loud, and the OSSIA New Music Group.
My current projects are Duo 161, a classical chamber duo with cellist Rosa Balderrama, and Liminal Aberration, a jazz fusion duo. Past projects include The Critique of Pure Rhythm and the Burning City Orchestra, and I have also toured with the Irish Tenors and recorded with the Irish traditional band Dannsair on Mists of Ennistymon.
The electronics interest me as much as the instruments. I design and build guitar pedals, and taught a pedal-building workshop for Ohio State undergraduates; I also restore vintage audio equipment for a dedicated listening room.
I am a registered Suzuki teacher and have taught at community music schools, public schools, and summer camps. My musical and philosophical lives meet in research on inquiry-based music teaching and learning, which I presented at the College Music Society's 2026 national conference.
Performances & Lessons