Laurence Thomas

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Laurence Thomas is Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at Syracuse University. Thomas is noted for his work on moral theory, on social philosophy and on American Blacks and Jews.

Thomas asserts that we owe special "moral deference" to what he calls "diminished social category" people, that is, to individuals who belong to groups that are unjustly undervalued, we owe a presumption in favor os that person’s account of her experiences, for example, if a black woman in a white society claims that she has been subjected to racism, her allegation must be taken especially seriously. ^[1]

He has held appointments at Notre Dame, University of Maryland, University of North Carolina, and Oberlin College, and in 1994 was a visiting scholar in the Religion Department at the University of Michigan. He was Andrew Mellon Faculty Fellow at Harvard University in 1978-79, received an NEH award to conduct a seminar on "Competing Rights Claims" in the summer of 1981, and was a Fellow of the National Humanities Center in 1982-83. He has given the Lawrence Kohlberg Lecture at the Association of Moral Education (1993) and the fifth Meyer Warren Tenenbaum and Labelle Tenenbaum Lecture at the University of South Carolina.^[2]

Thomas's teaching has been widely noted and praised, including feature in the Education Section of The New York Times (26 April 1992). He was named Syracuse University's Scholar-Teacher of the Year in 1993.^{[citation needed]} In July 1997, he presented the Kovler Lectures at the Medical School of the University of Cape Town, South Africa. These lectures will become part of his forthcoming book on moral objectivity and evil. He has been the Lincoln Lecturer (Fall 2002) at Arizona State University and in October of 2000, he lectured before Queen Beatrix of Holland.^[2]

[edit] Books

Living Morally : A Psychology of Moral Character (Temple University Press, 1989)
Vessels of Evil (Temple University Press, 1993)
Sexual Rights and Human Orientation (Roman & Littlefield, 1999)
The Family and the Political Self (Cambridge University Press, 2006)