Dissertation
Liberalism for Nonliberals: Toward a MacIntyrean Modus Vivendi
Ph.D. in Political Science, McGill University, 2025
This dissertation fundamentally rethinks liberalism as a modus vivendi arrangement—an uneasy negotiation between political agents who disagree about the nature and desirability of liberalism itself. I argue that traditional Rawlsian approaches can no longer command sufficient moral commitment to sustain an overlapping consensus. Instead, I turn to nonliberal thinkers, particularly Alasdair MacIntyre, to reconstruct a viable liberal framework that aims to accommodate critics of liberalism through devolutionary federalism. The project examines how ideological monoculture in civic education has delegitimated core constitutional values, and proposes institutional arrangements that preserve pluralism while maintaining essential civic structures through arguments derived from nonliberal theory itself.
Dissertation Committee
Advisor: Jacob T. Levy (Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory, McGill University)
Committee Members: William Clare Roberts (McGill University), Victor Muñiz-Fraticelli (McGill University)
External Examiner: Robert P. George (McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University)
Working Papers
This paper identifies and analyzes how political liberalism's promise of neutrality fails. Civic education, in practice, smuggles in comprehensively liberal moral doctrines, thereby teaching comprehensive liberalism under the guise of political liberalism. This "collapse" renders supposedly pluralistic liberal arguments ultimately sectarian and destructive of nonliberal modes of being, therefore helping to explain why nonliberals across the ideological spectrum have grown disenchanted with liberal governance. The paper traces conceptual, pedagogical, and discursive dimensions of this collapse, with particular attention to contemporary debates over gender, sexuality, and religious liberty in public education.
Draft copy available upon request.
Presentations & Public Scholarship
September 2025
Conference on Voluntary Governance, Center for Governance and Markets, University of Pittsburgh
August 2025
The Political Philosophy Podcast (interview)
April 2021
YouTube lecture on Max Weber's classic essay examining the ethics of political action and responsibility
November 2020
Podcast discussion on navigating political disagreement across worldviews
May 2018
Conference: Political Theory in/and/as Political Science, McGill University
Fellowships & Grants
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Academic Mentorship Grant
Institute for Humane Studies, 2025 -
Expense Support Grant
Institute for Humane Studies, 2025 -
Visiting PhD/Dissertation Fellowship
Mercatus Center, 2023-2024 -
Adam Smith Fellowship
Mercatus Center, 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 -
Don Lavoie Fellowship
Mercatus Center, 2021 -
Summer Writing Fellowship
Institute for Humane Studies, 2020 -
Research Group on Constitutional Studies Excellence Fellowship
McGill University, 2017-2020 -
Groupe de Recherche Interuniversitaire en Philosophie Politique Fellowship
McGill University, 2017-2020