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)
Randall Curren is a professor and chair of the philosophy department and holds a secondary appointment in the Warner School’s educational leadership program. He is also chair of moral and virtue education in the Jubilee Centre for Character and Values at the University of Birmingham in England and holds the first professorship established in the Royal Institute of Philosophy (London). Curren 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 2012-13. He joined the University of Rochester’s faculty in 1988.
Curren’s work in the philosophy and ethics of education focuses on human well-being, motivation, and the nature and aims of education; sustainability and development; educational equity, justice, and rights; and the relationships between education, authority, and law. 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 and the Spencer Foundation. 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.
He has published numerous chapters in books, journal articles, reviews, notes, and encyclopedia entries. His current projects include a co-authored book with historian, Charles Dorn, on patriotism and civic education and a co-authored book with geologist and teacher educator, Ellen Metzger, on education and sustainability. He is the author of Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000) and Education for Sustainable Development: A Philosophical Assessment (2009), and editor of A Companion to the Philosophy of Education (Blackwell, Ltd., 2003; 2006; 2011 in Chinese) and Philosophy of Education: An Anthology (Blackwell, 2007). He is also the editor-in-chief of the international journal, Theory and Research in Education (SAGE).