Michelle Mason Bizri

I am an Associate Professor and the John Dolan Professor of Philosophy (2022-2024) in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota.

As a moral philosopher, my academic research focuses on normative questions in moral psychology. In my view, our ethical reflection should extend beyond what we do and encompass how we feel. Once it does so, moreover, the modern moral dogma that we owe everyone respect invites interrogation. My own interrogations lead me to conclude, among other things, that contempt for a person may be morally justified; that we may owe those I dub our moral enemies less than we do mere strangers; that the love most worth wanting is a response to the content of our character; and that extirpating hatred is a luxury of privilege. My work in moral philosophy has been supported by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Harvard University’s Program for Ethics and the Professions, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Templeton Foundation, among others. I have published articles in Ethics, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and Behavioral and Brain Sciences and chapters in Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, among others. My books include The Moral Psychology of Contempt (editor, Rowman & Littlefield, 2018) and a forthcoming monograph, tentatively titled Valuing Persons, under contract with Oxford University Press.