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I am currently an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bard College. Prior to starting at Bard, I was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow with the Leslie Center for the Humanities and Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Dartmouth College.

My research sits at the intersection of moral psychology and social and political philosophy, with a particular focus on the philosophy of race. I draw liberally on a number of philosophical traditions in my work, primarily the global pragmatist tradition in John Dewey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and B. R. Ambedkar, but also on the Black radical tradition, feminist traditions, Buddhist modernisms and anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperial practices from around the globe. I also have continuing research interests in philosophy of law, ethics, colonialism, early modern European philosophy, and the philosophy of the social sciences.

My current book project is entitled The Problem of Unfreedom. It examines the question of whether people who are unfree can free themselves. Against pessimists, who argue that unfreedom cannot be changed, and against externalists, who argue that only those who are already free can make others freer, I argue that the unfree can free themselves. I do so through a non-ideal theoretic analysis of how social structures of unfreedom stabilize themselves through shaping the psychologies of those who live under them. Understanding these mechanisms of stability can reveal to us possibilities for transformation and change. And, perhaps, it can shed light on what it might truly mean to be free.

In addition to the book project, I am currently working on a number of papers on the moral psychology of politics and social change, as well as other projects in Asian American philosophy, drawing on editorial work I am doing for APA Studies on Asian and Asian American Philosophers and Philosophies. For details, see my Research page.

Before completing my Ph.D. at Columbia University in 2021, I completed a B.A., an L.L.B., and an L.L.M. at the University at Sydney, where I was a sessional lecturer in philosophy. I have also taught constitutional law and jurisprudence at Macquarie University, Sydney. In other lives, I’ve been a journalist, martial arts teacher, musician, and lawyer.

Photo taken by Nicole Mabry and Helen Zhao, on Fire Island, NY in 2020.

Public philosophy matters to me. For some of what I take “public philosophy” to mean (hint: it’s not “taking academic philosophy to the masses”) and why it matters, you can read this essay on “The Hope of Public Philosophy” that I wrote for The Philosopher (a magazine for which I am also on the editorial board) in Fall 2023.

Here’s a podcast interview on racial capitalism, Du Bois, and unfreedom I gave in June 2022 with Dialexicon‘s Saurish Srivastava. Dialexicon are a youth-run organization helping to bring philosophy to middle- and high-schoolers.

And here is a three-part series of podcast episodes from October 2022 for HotPot with Steven Zhang – with some amazing editing – in which we talk about Asian identity, poetry, religion, racial capitalism, and the potentials of philosophy.