Featured SAH Alumni

Darrel Moellendorf, Philosophy

Darrel Moellendorf received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Claremont Graduate University in 1990.  He is now a Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs at San Diego State University (SDSU). He specializes in the areas of ethics and political philosophy, with particular interests in morality and climate change and global justice. Before working at SDSU he was Associate Professor of Philosophy (and Head of Department) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

He has published over thirty scholarly articles and book chapters, and is the author of two academic books: Global Inequality Matters, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 and Cosmopolitan Justice, Westview Press, 2002. Additionally he has co- edited three books: Global Justice: Seminal Essays (with Thomas Pogge), Paragon House 2008; Current Debates in Global Justice (with Gillian Brock), Springer 2005; and Jurisprudence (with Chris Roderer), Juta 2004. He is currently editing (with Heather Widdows) on The Handbook of Global Ethics, Acumen, forthcoming.

His research has been supported by the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, Friends of the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the James Hervey Johnson Charitable Educational Trust.

In 2008-2009 he was Member of the School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study. He has been a visiting professor at Institut für Interkulterelle und Internationale Studien, Universität Bremen, Germany, the Philosophy Department, Rhodes University, South Africa, and the Philosophy Department, University of Maine. From 1996 to 2002 he was a member of the Philosophy Department of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, where he served as head of department 2001-2002.

Over the past several years he has been busy writing and speaking about climate change, morality, and policy.

He has recently published several academic papers on morality and climate change:

“A Normative Account of Dangerous Climate Change,” Climatic Change, forthcoming.

“A Right to Sustainable Development,” The Monist, forthcoming.

“Common Atmospheric Ownership and Equal Emissions Entitlements,” in Denis Arnold ed. The Ethics of Global Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, 2011, forthcoming.

“Justice and the Intergenerational Assignment of the Costs of Climate Change,” Journal of Social Philosophy, 40:2, 2009, 204-224.

He has also published a policy paper on climate change:

“Treaty Norms and Climate Change Mitigation,” Ethics and International Affairs, 23:3, Fall 2009, 247-265. Also available on line at http://www.cceia.org/resources/journal/23_3/features/001
That paper was widely read; it was the most down-loaded paper of 2009 for the Journal Ethics and International Affairs.

He has also recently published two non-academic articles on climate change policy: “Curbing Carbon, Sustaining Development: The Tension in Climate Change Mitigation” published in the December 2009 on-line edition of Dissent, available at http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=315.

“Limping Towards Cancun” published in the May 2010 on-line edition of Dissent, available http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=359.

He blogs about climate change and other issues for Dissent on-line. For an index of his blogs see http://dissentmagazine.org/atw/author.php?id=87.

He was interviewed about the December 2009 Copenhagen climate conference for a podcast by John Tessitore, editor-in-chief of Ethics and International Affairs. This interview is available at http://www.cceia.org/resources/audio/data/000452.

In October of 2010 he was interviewed about geo-engineering on the San Diego public radio show “These Days.” This interview is available at http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/sep/29/ethics-forum-should-we-use-technology-fight-global/.

He has also presented papers on morality and climate change policy to university audiences around the world, including at Bennington College, Columbia University, the Institute for Advanced Study, Johann Goethe Universität (Frankfurt, Germany), McGill University, North Carolina State University, Rhodes University (Grahamstown, South Africa), the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Richmond.