Randall Curren
Professor (joint appointment; main affiliation: Department of Philosophy, the College)
Educational Leadership
PhD, University of Pittsburgh (philosophy)
MA, University of Pittsburgh (philosophy)
BA, University of New Orleans (philosophy)
Biography
Randall Curren is a professor of philosophy in the School of Arts & Sciences and holds a secondary appointment in the Warner School’s educational leadership program. He was the Ginny and Robert Loughlin Founders’ Circle Member in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. for 2012-2013, and was appointed to the first professorship established in the Royal Institute of Philosophy (London) together with a fractional research professorship at the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham (UK) for 2013–2015. He joined the University of Rochester’s faculty in 1988.
Curren’s work in the philosophy and ethics of education focuses on human flourishing, motivation, and the nature and aims of education; sustainability and development; educational justice, civic friendship, and education in intellectual, moral, and civic virtues. A former Mellon Fellow, Newcombe Fellow, Spencer Fellow, and Andrew Mellon Instructor in Philosophy at the California Institute of Technology, Curren has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Science Foundation, Spencer Foundation, Andrew Mellon Foundation, and Institute for Humane Studies. He is a past president of the Association for Philosophy of Education, has served on the Ethics Committee of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and chaired the American Philosophical Association Committee on Teaching.
Curren has published several books and numerous journal articles, chapters in books, reviews, notes, and encyclopedia entries. His recent works include Living Well Now and in the Future: Why Sustainability Matters (MIT Press, 2017; with geoscientist Ellen Metzger), Patriotic Education in a Global Age (University of Chicago Press, 2018, with historian Charles Dorn), the Handbook of Philosophy of Education (Routledge, 2023), and “Philosophy of Education” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2025). His current projects include editing a 40-chapter Cambridge Handbook of Flourishing-Focused Education: Theory, Research and Global Contexts.