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Curriculum Vitae

Professor Benjamin McKean is a political theorist whose research concerns global justice, populism, and the relationship between theory and practice. His work has been published in the American Political Science Review, Political Theory, and the Journal of Politics. His book Disposed to Justice (forthcoming from Oxford University Press) argues that people subject to unjust institutions and practices should be disposed to solidarity with the others who are also subject to them, even when those relations cross state borders. A neoliberal global economy characterized by inequality, financialization, and transnational supply chains creates a widely shared interest in resisting injustice, grounded in the way that existing institutions impair freedom. Identifying this interest as the basis for solidarity provides a new perspective not only on the possibility of achieving global justice, but on the nature and limits of contemporary egalitarian liberalism. He is also at work on a second book project tentatively titled _Political Freedom and Resentment_ about the relationship between democracy and populism. Before coming to Ohio State, he received his PhD from the Princeton University Department of Politics and was a Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago.