The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University is excited to announce our Graduate Fellows in Ethics for the 2019-20 academic year.

The Edmond J. Safra Graduate Fellows in Ethics:

Leah Downey is a PhD candidate in Government specializing in Political Theory.  Her primary research interests are in monetary policy and economic governance. Her dissertation explores the normative foundations of central banking, asking what our current approach to monetary policymaking says about our normative commitments vis-à-vis economic welfare. She also has interests in the use of time-horizons in macroeconomic theory and the role of consistency in macroeconomic modeling. During her time at Harvard, Leah has worked as a teaching fellow for courses on inequality, the history of private property, feminist political thought, and the history of modern political thought. Leah holds BAs in Mathematics and Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MSc in Economics and Philosophy from the London School of Economics and Political Science.  

Edmund Tweedy Flanigan is a PhD Candidate in Political Theory. His dissertation research concerns the nature and limits of the claims of law, considered theoretically and from the perspective of applied political ethics. In particular, he has written about the duty to obey the law, the concept of authority, and moral permissions to violent political protest. In addition, he maintains interests in Kant's political philosophy and the nature of obligations between generations. He holds an MPhil in Political Theory from the University of Oxford and an AB in Philosophy from Georgetown University. 

Zoë Hitzig is a PhD candidate in Economics. Her current projects in microeconomic theory and public economics center on the provision of public goods and the design of social insurance programs. She also studies economic methodology––for example, she has written on economists' roles in redesigning public school allocation algorithms and FCC spectrum auctions, and on the use of big data in economic research and policymaking. At Harvard, she has been a teaching fellow for courses on economic inequality, philosophy of economics, and real analysis. She holds an AB in Mathematics and Philosophy from Harvard and an MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge. 

Gili Kliger is a PhD candidate in History. Her research interests and publications span topics in the history of modern social and political thought. Her dissertation tracks the emergence of the discipline of anthropology, and its influence on the history of European philosophy. In particular, it argues that late nineteenth-century studies of indigenous culture fundamentally challenged assumptions about what constituted the individual. No longer master of its own reason or passions, the individual—as discerned in myths and masks, drawings and tools, kinship charts and objects of worship—became something new: Anthropology had revealed the complexity of forces shaping individual thought and action. The consequences of this finding were to unfold across the following decades, informing the way continental thinkers recast notions of power, autonomy, and moral obligation. Situating European thought within its global context, the dissertation uncovers profound but neglected links between colonial science, missionary evangelism, and twentieth-century intellectual history. Kliger holds an AB from Brown University and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge.  

Josh Simons is a PhD candidate in the Government Department. His research explores the politics and ethics of machine learning. In the context of social inequality encoded in vast data sets, machine learning requires choices to be made, from which some win and some lose, and which shape the distribution of power over time. The dissertation explores what follows from recognizing the political character of machine learning. It uses machine learning to explore familiar problems in politics, about discrimination and fairness, justice and justification, and even the scope of politics. Josh is also working on projects with Danielle Allen on ‘Political Economy and Justice’ at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and with the Centre for Internet and Society in India, exploring how data is used to target welfare to citizens in India. Josh formerly worked as a Policy Advisor for the Labour Party in the British Parliament and graduated with a starred first in Politics from Cambridge University. 

William Tadros is a PhD candidate in Philosophy with research interests in political philosophy and normative jurisprudence. His dissertation examines the source of coercion’s normative significance—i.e., its impermissibility and effects on responsibility—as well as U.S. legal doctrines that rely upon the concept. Eventually, he plans to develop this work into a study of coercion by institutional actors. At Harvard, William has served as a teaching fellow for introductory courses in microeconomics and macroeconomics. He has a BA in Economics and Mathematics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an MA in Economics from Stanford University, an MA in Philosophy from Tufts University, and a JD from Harvard Law School. In 2017–18, William served as a law clerk for the Honorable Danny J. Boggs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. 

Hanne van den Berg is a Doctor of Design student in Urban Planning and Design. Her research focuses on the nexus between urban planning, adaptation to climate change and decision-making. In her doctoral dissertation, she explores decision-making on resource allocation in urban climate change adaptation projects and particularly the tradeoffs between principles of equity and efficiency that decision-makers face. Through a combination of comparative case study research and theoretical analysis, she aims to develop a systematic and transparent analytical framework that can assist city officials in their decision-making on local adaptation efforts. At Harvard, Hanne has served as Teaching Fellow for various courses, including quantitative and qualitative analysis, thesis preparation, and a design studio on urban injustice. Hanne has previously received a Fulbright Fellowship and a Fellowship from the Prins Bernhard  Cultuurfonds (the Netherlands) for her doctoral research. Prior to starting her doctorate, Hanne worked for an applied research institute in the Netherlands and Singapore on climate change adaptation, participatory planning and urban water management strategies and tools. She holds an MSc degree in Urban Planning and Design from Delft University of Technology (cum laude), an MA and BA degree in Architecture from the University of Cambridge (Hons) and a BSc in Natural Sciences from University College Utrecht (summa cum laude).