David Decosimo is Director of the Institute for Philosophy & Religion, Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics, and Affiliated Faculty in the Department of Philosophy at Boston University. He received his Ph.D. and an MA from Princeton University, an MA from the University of Chicago, and his BA from the University of Virginia, where he was an Echols Scholar. His research and teaching encompass ethics, religion, and politics. His first book, Ethics as a Work of Charity: Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue (Stanford University Press, 2014), won the international Manfred Lautenschlaeger Prize from Heidelberg University. His scholarly articles on figures such as Augustine, al-Ghazālī, and Peter Abelard, and topics ranging from the ethics of torture and Islamic ideals of political freedom to the theory and method of comparative religion and the metaethics of intrinsic goodness, have appeared in scholarly journals in religious studies, law, theology, and philosophy.

As a cultural and political commentator, his writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and Washington Post. A past Chair of Boston University’s Academic Freedom Committee and a Founding Member of the Academic Freedom Alliance, he is a proponent of open inquiry, academic freedom, and a university and public culture marked by rich pluralism and a shared commitment to reasoned conversation, debate, and dialogue across our deepest disagreements. Likewise, Professor Decosimo is also an advocate of humanistic learning that invites students to explore questions about the most important things in conversation with one another and with diverse and enduring philosophical, religious, and literary works, past and present.