Prof. John Tomasi

John Tomasi is Associate Professor of Political Science at Brown University and Director of the Political Theory Project at Brown University. He is author of Liberalism Beyond Justice: Citizens Society and the Boundaries of Political Theory (Princeton University Press, 2001), and numerous articles.

He received his B.A. from Colby College, his M.A. from the University of Arizona (1990), and his B. Phil., D. Phil. from Oxford University (1993). He has had previous appointments at Princeton University and Stanford University. His specializations are political theory and ethics and public policy.

Liberal regimes shape the ethical outlook of their citizens, relentlessly influencing their most personal commitments over time. This fact raises pressing questions: If liberals cannot prevent the spillover of public values into nonpublic domains, how accommodating of diversity can a liberal regime actually be? To what degree can a liberal society be a home even to the people whose viewpoints it was formally designed to include?