I grew up in Detroit and first attended college at the University of Chicago. But I dropped out in my third year and hitch-hiked out to California to pursue creative writing and political activism. Eventually my interest in political philosophy grew to the point where I felt the need to return to school. I finished college at Berkeley, studying mainly with Donald Davidson, the philosopher of language and action theory. Grad school at UCLA led to an interest in the history of philosophy. My dissertation, “Descartes’s Metaphysical Reasoning,” was published by Routledge. After a two-year Mellon Fellowship at Stanford, I came to Ursinus in 2000. Recently I have returned to my early interest in political philosophy. The subject itself encourages to find approaches in the classroom that express the great possible respect for students’ autonomy and encourage them to take control of their own learning.