2025 Philosophy Newsletter
Message from the Chair
Department Spotlights
Faculty Kudos
Alumni Class Notes
Message from the Chair
Greetings to all of our alumni from the George Washington University Department of Philosophy! The department has kept busy since our last newsletter. We are pleased to share with you a few of the exciting things happening in the department, including the achievements of our philosophy community.
We are very proud that we had the highest number of graduating majors in recent history this year: 22 students graduating with either the BA in philosophy or the BA in philosophy with a public affairs focus as their first or second majors. Among our 2025 graduating class, we had a Luther Rice Fellow (Seyeon Moon) and two Thacher Fellows (Megan Clancy and Lucas Scott).
The Luther Rice Undergraduate Research Fellowship is a very prestigious and competitive fellowship awarded to a select few students in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, funding a senior honors thesis project. Seyeon’s project was supervised by Laura Papish, and concerned the ethics of proposed changes to the United States organ transplant allocation system. Seyeon, who will attend Georgetown Law School, was profiled in GW Today.
Thacher Fellowships are also highly competitive awards funding senior honors thesis projects in the Philosophy Department. The program is made possible by the generous ongoing support of our alum, Michael Thacher, BA ’70. Megan’s project, supervised by Mark Ralkowski, applied concepts from Heidegger to an analysis of friendship and authenticity in the age of modern technology. I had the pleasure to supervise Lucas’ project, which examined the philosophical assumptions behind treatment of Long COVID and other chronic illnesses.
Our long tradition of supporting undergraduate research into cutting edge philosophical topics is alive and well!
As ever, thank you, alumni, so much for your support and involvement. Please stay in touch.
Sincerely,
Tadeusz Zawidzki
Department Chair
Department Spotlights
Philosophy’s Summer Abroad in Greece
Professor Mark Ralkowski led his annual History of Ancient Philosophy short term abroad program (STAP) in Greece from May 21st to June 1st, 2025. Between lessons and studying, students were able to take in the sights, including visiting the Acropolis in Athens and archeological landmarks in Delphi. They also enjoyed a winery in Santorini and hiked in the Imbros Gorge in Crete.
Celebrating Professors Archer and Wills’ Recent Publications
The Philosophy Department recently celebrated two professors’ newest books: Avery Archer’s The Attitude of Agnosticism and Vanessa Wills’ Marx’s Ethical Vision. During an interdepartmental book launch event, both authors discussed their writing experiences and how their personal and academic backgrounds influenced their philosophical inquiries.
Faculty Kudos
- Avery Archer attended the Berlin School of Mind and Brain Summer School workshop “Neutral by Choice: Cognitive Neuroscience meets Epistomology” and presented his work regarding agnosticism.
- David DeGrazia was a temporary investigator (visiting scholar) in the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health during the 2024-25 academic year as he worked on his sabbatical project, Investigating Moral Status. He was also one of several scholars who were interviewed in the documentary film Humans and Other Animals.
- Tad Zawidzki, together with his post-doc Rémi Tison, co-edited the Routledge Handbook of Mindshaping, published in 2025. The volume contains 37 chapters by 46 authors examining implications and applications of “mindshaping,” a concept developed and defended in Zawidzki’s own 2013 book, Mindshaping (MIT Press).
Alumni Class Notes
- Dylan Sapienza, BA ’22, is an AI product manager at New York Life, where he leads development of agent-facing tools that blend large language models with sales coaching workflows.
- Ben Stone, BA ’23, is beginning his first year at the University of Chicago Law School as a David M. Rubenstein Scholar. The highly selective award is among the most prestigious law school scholarships in the country.