PROFILE

Sarah Pessin, Ph.D., is professor of philosophy and Jewish thought at the University of Denver (DU), where she also serves as interfaith chair and faculty Senate president (Spring 2020–2022). She served as the director of the Center for Judaic Studies from 2008–2019, helped design the campus’ Holocaust Memorial Social Action Site, has held the Everding Distinguished Lectureship from Iliff School of Theology and St. John’s Cathedral (2016), and serves as the team leader for DU’s Religious Inclusivity Initiative.

In her research on philosophical ethics, pluralism, and the “politics of responsibility,” Sarah is interested in unquantifiable dimensions of inter-human responsivity and response, and in understanding and developing models of civic engagement that include living uncomfortably with real difference.

Her current projects include new courses in the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of race, social and political philosophy, and interfaith civics, as well as forthcoming books on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and responsibility in civics.

Her interdisciplinary research focuses on (1) philosophies and phenomenologies of alterity, exile, and “difficult hope,” (2) Levinasian responsibility with implications for rethinking contemporary American civics, and (3) Greek, Jewish, and Islamic Neoplatonic insights on goodness.

Sarah has presented and published widely, including a study of receptivity and desire in Jewish and Greek philosophy (Cambridge, 2013), a co-edited multicultural reader in medieval philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2019), and chapters for key reference works in her fields, including The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy, The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, and The Routledge Companion to Islamic Philosophy.

Sarah holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from The Ohio State University, and an M.A. in philosophy from Columbia University. She did her undergraduate work at Stern College of Yeshiva University.