Rate My Professor Désirée Weber

Désirée Weber is Associate Professor of Political Science at The College of Wooster. She earned a B.A. from Macalester College in 2007 and M.A. in 2011 and Ph.D. in 2016 from Northwestern University. Her expertise lies in modern and contemporary political theory, focusing on language, discourse, and argumentation in political thinking. Weber specializes in the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein and other language philosophers on political understanding and judgment. She explores conventions, notions of certainty, established forms of life underlying political life, roles of judgment and education in political theory, conceptions of change and critique, contemporary democratic theory, and rhetoric. Currently, she is completing a monograph on the role of teaching and learning in Wittgenstein’s biography and later work, examining implications for human capacity to make meaning and judgments about meaning.

Weber teaches a variety of political theory courses at Wooster. Her contributions to scholarship include the critical introduction to the first English translation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Word Book (Wörterbuch für Volksschulen), published in collaboration with artist Paul Chan in November 2020. In 2024, she contributed the chapter “Community in a Democratic Society” to the edited volume Wittgenstein and Democratic Politics: Education, Community, Practice (Palgrave Macmillan), which delves into Wittgenstein’s conception of community. Additional publications feature “A Pedagogic Reading of the Philosophical Investigations: Criteria, Judgment, and Normativity.” Weber engages in public scholarship, including a USA Today panel on policing in 2021 and collaborations with local agencies and alumni to advance progressive policy changes in 2022. She has supported student research projects, such as those enhancing accessibility to Austrian philosophers’ writings.