Teaching with IPSP

During the spring semester of 2016, Marc Fleurbaey, a member of the IPSP Steering Committee, taught a course at Princeton entitled “Capitalism, Utopia, and Social Justice.” Part of Princeton’s Freshman Seminar program, the course introduced first-year students to a wide range of topics at the intersection of philosophy, economics, and political science. Throughout the semester, each student conducted research on a topic of their choosing, with the theme of creating a more just society. Some students decided to work together on large topics such as education and healthcare. Others found that their individual topics, such as feminism and bodily autonomy, were closely connected, and benefited from sharing their research with each other.

All of the students’ topics turned out to be related to each other to such an extent that one student, Casey Chow, made a chart connecting all of them together:

Class members learned about the work of the IPSP and were encouraged to adopt a similar approach in their research. As a final assignment, each student summarized their research in the form of a blog post aimed at a general audience. Those posts can now be viewed online, along with a summary video (below) created by class members Ryan Ozminkowski and Ben Jacobson.

In addition, the course was highlighted in a story on the Princeton homepage.