Melissa S. Williams, Director, 2005-

Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto.

Professor Williams teaches the history of political thought, contemporary democratic theory, feminist theory, multiculturalism, and American political thought. In Fall 2006 she launched a new introductory undergraduate course to dovetail with the activities of the Centre for Ethics: POL105Y, Ethics and the Public Sphere.

Williams is author of Voice, Trust, and Memory: Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation (Princeton University Press, 1998), and co-editor (with Patrick Hanafin) of Identity, Rights, and Constitutional Transformation (Ashgate, 1999). She serves as Editor of NOMOS, the Yearbook of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy, and recently co-edited Political Exclusion and Domination: NOMOS 46 (New York University Press, 2005) (with Stephen Macedo); Humanitarian Intervention: NOMOS 47 (with Terry Nardin); and Toleration and Its Limits: NOMOS 48 (co-edited with Jeremy Waldron). Williams is author of articles on issues in contemporary democratic theory and the history of political thought, ranging across the themes of citizenship, deliberative democracy, toleration, education, Aboriginal rights, feminist theory, representation, and affirmative action. Currently, she is working on two book projects, Equality and Reconstructing Impartiality.

Williams received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University and her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College. She was a Visiting Faculty Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Ethics and the Professions (now the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics) (1996-97), a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam (2000), and Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values (2000-01).

6 Hoskin Avenue
Toronto, ON
M5S 1H8

Phone: (416) 978-8220

Fax: (416) 946-8069

Email: melissa.williams@utoronto.ca

Publications

2007. NOMOS XLVIII: Toleration and Its Limits. New York: NYU Press (co-edited with Jeremy Waldron) (forthcoming).

2007. Nonterritorial Boundaries of Citizenship. In Identities, Affiliations, and Allegiances, ed. Seyla Benhabib and Ian Shapiro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (forthcoming).

2005. NOMOS XLVI: Political Exclusion and Domination. New York: NYU Press (co-edited with Stephen Macedo).

2005. NOMOS XLVII: Humanitarian Intervention. New York: NYU Press (co-edited with Terry Nardin).

2005. Access to Public Universities: Addressing Systemic Inequalities. In Taking Public Universities Seriously, ed. Carolyn Tuohy and Ron Daniels, 514-38. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

2005. Japan and ‘the Other’: Reconceiving Japanese Citizenship in the Era of Globalization. Asian Perspectives 29(1).

2005. The Jury, the Law, and the Primacy of Politics. In NOMOS XLVII: Humanitarian Intervention, ed. Terry Nardin and Melissa S. Williams. New York: New York University Press.

2005. Tolerable Liberalism. In Minorities within Minorities, ed. Avigail Eisenberg and Jeff Spinner-Halev, 19-40. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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