Professor
Dean, Residential College in the Arts and Humanities
Esquith has been working on ethical problems in developing countries since 1990 when he was a senior Fulbright scholar in Poland. His primary scholarly work is Intimacy and Spectacle (Cornell, 1994), a critique of classical and modern liberal political philosophy. While in Poland he collaborated on two collections of essays written by Polish and U.S. scholars on the changes in Eastern Europe since 1989. His research and teaching since that time has focused on democratic transitions in post-authoritarian countries. He has written on the rule of law, the problem of democratic political education, mass violence and reconciliation, and moral and political responsibility. He has also been involved in numerous civic engagement projects in the public schools. He has led a study abroad program focusing on ethical issues in development in Mali in summer 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010, and he spent the academic year 2005-06 teaching and working with colleagues at the University of Bamako as a senior Fulbright scholar. There he taught two seminars on ethics and development at the Institut Polytechnic Rural and the Institut Supérieure de Formation et de Recherche Appliquée. He has just completed a new book on mass violence and democratic political education entitled The Political Responsibilities of Everyday Bystanders and co-edited a volume of critical essays with Fred Gifford on the capabilities approach to development entitled Capabilities, Power, and Institutions, both published by Penn State University Press. After serving as chair of the Department of Philosophy for five years, he returned to Michigan State University in fall 2006 to become Dean of the new Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, and serve as one of the leaders of the doctoral specialization in Ethics and Development which he helped to found.