Michele Moody-Adams

Michele Moody-Adams is an African American philosopher and academic administrator. Until recently, she was vice provost for undergraduate education at Cornell University and Hutchinson Professor of Ethics and Public Life. On July 1, 2009, she became the Dean of Columbia College and Vice President for Undergraduate Education at Columbia University. She is the first woman and first African American to hold the post.

Moody-Adams grew up in Chicago, graduated from Wellesley College in 1978 with a B.A. in philosophy. She attended Somerville College at Oxford University on a Marshall Scholarship, and received a B.A. in philosophy, politics, and economics, in 1980. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1986. Moody-Adams wrote her dissertation on “Moral Philosophy Naturalized: Morality and Mitigated Skepticism in Hume" under the supervision of John Rawls. Before coming to Cornell in Fall of 2000, Moody-Adams worked at Indiana University, Bloomington, as Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education.

Moody-Adams responded to the September 11 attacks by asserting that "Vengeance is not the answer here," and that the result of an American military response could be the end of everything worth fighting for, "even the end of the species."

In February, 2009, Moody-Adams co-sponsored with university funds a controversial student display on the Cornell campus by the Islamic Alliance for Justice consisting of signs and 1300 flags representing dead Palestinians and Israelis.

When she was appointed to her Columbia post, administrators at Cornell praised her, "Michele is an exceptional scholar and administrator," said Provost Kent Fuchs. "Her breadth of experience working on many issues of vital importance to the university and her deep academic insights have enriched Cornell in multiple ways. We will miss her leadership, insights and intellect."

On August 20, 2011, Moody-Adams announced her resignation from the deanship, effective the following June 30, after only two years on the job, citing changes in Columbia University policy toward the College that made it impossible for her to remain in her post.

Bibliography

• Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture and Philosophy, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
• "The Idea of Moral Progress," Metaphilosophy (1999).
• "Grrffin's Modest Proposal," Utilitas (1999).
• "A Commentary on Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race," Ethics (1999).
• "The Virtues of Nussbaum's Essentialism," Metaphilosophy (1998).
• "Culture, Responsibility, and Affected Ignorance," Ethics (1994).
• "Theory, Practice and the Contingency of Rorty's Irony," Journal of Social Philosophy (1994).
• "Race, Class and the Social Construction of Self-Respect," Philosophical Forum (1992-3).
• "On the Old Saw that Character is Destiny, " in Identity, Character, and Morality: Essays in Moral Psychology, ed. O. Flanagan and A. Rorty (Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press, 1991).
• "Gender and the Complexity of Moral Voices," in Feminist Ethics, Ed. Claudia Card (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991).
• "On Surrogacy: Morality, Markets and Motherhood," Public Affairs Quarterly (1991).
• "On the Alleged Methodological Infirmity of Ethics," American Philosophical Quarterly (1990).