Rate My Professor David Reidy

David Reidy, J.D., Ph.D., is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Kansas in 1997 and holds a J.D. Reidy joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee in 2000, advancing to the rank of full Professor. He served one term as Department Head and two terms as Distinguished Professor. Throughout his tenure, he maintained an affiliation with the Department of Political Science. Reidy's academic career has focused on social, political, and legal philosophy, with particular emphasis on the work of John Rawls, human rights, democracy, moral psychology, and liberal toleration.

Reidy has published extensively on these topics, establishing himself as a leading scholar on Rawlsian political philosophy. He co-edited The Rawls Lexicon with Jon Mandle (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and A Companion to Rawls (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014). He also edited Rawls's Law of Peoples: A Realistic Utopia? (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006). Notable articles include "Political Authority and Human Rights," which received the 2009 Berger Prize from the American Philosophical Association's Committee on Law and Philosophy; "Rawls's Religion and Justice as Fairness" (2010); "Human Rights and Liberal Toleration" (2010); and "Public Political Reason: Still Not Wide Enough" (2020). Recent post-retirement works encompass "Rawls and American Political Traditions" (2023), "Democracy and Human Rights" (2023), "Human Rights and Cosmopolitanism" (2024), and the editor's introduction to a special issue on "Rawls at 100; Theory at 50" (2024). Reidy has delivered papers at American Philosophical Association meetings, including "Nickel and Rawls on Human Rights and Toleration" (2009, Central Division). His scholarship addresses the stability of justice as fairness, religion in political liberalism, international toleration, and progressive democracy, contributing significantly to contemporary debates in political theory.