The American Philosophical Association is pleased to announce that Professor Johann Frick (Princeton University) has been awarded the 2017 Gregory Kavka/University of California, Irvine Prize in Political Philosophy for his article, “Contractualism and Social Risk.”
Honorable mention has been awarded to Professor Adam Hosein (University of Colorado Boulder) for his article, “Freedom, Sex Roles, and Anti-Discrimination Law.”
The Gregory Kavka/UCI Prize in Political Philosophy is awarded every other year in odd years to the author of a paper in a refereed journal, an original book chapter or an original essay published in a collection with a multiplicity of contributors, from any area of political philosophy and political theory.
Frick will be awarded $500; in addition, a symposium in his honor will be held at the 2017 APA Pacific Division meeting in Seattle, WA, to include panelists commenting upon the ideas of his article, followed by Frick’s response.
Frick is an assistant professor in the department of philosophy and the Center for Human Values at Princeton University. His primary research interests lie in moral philosophy, political philosophy, and bioethics. His current work focuses on population ethics, the concept of interpersonal justification, and the ethics of risk imposition. In 2014, Frick completed his Ph.D. dissertation on population ethics at Harvard University. Previously, he read for the B.Phil. in philosophy at Merton College, Oxford, and was a pensionnaire étranger at the École normale supérieure in Paris.
The selection committee was impressed by the clarity, detail, forceful argument, and originality of Frick’s excellent paper. Frick shows how to handle one of the most difficult and profound problems for contractualism without lapsing into an aggregative view—but only if contractualists become more modest in their ambitions.
Hosein is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. He works mainly in moral, political, and legal philosophy, with a special interest in areas of international concern and issues relating to race or gender. Hosein has held fellowships and visiting positions at Chicago Law, Harvard University, the University of Toronto, and the Université catholique de Louvain. He holds a B.A. in philosophy, politics, and economics from Merton College, Oxford, and a Ph.D. from MIT.
The selection committee said that Hosein’s groundbreaking and careful paper argues that freedom to contribute to social change provides strong support for restrictions on sex-stereotyping. This conclusion could have important and beneficial implications not only for political theory but also for discrimination law.
