Joseph M. Schwartz is Associate Professor of Political Science and served as chair of the Department of Political Science at Temple University from 2000-2005. He teaches courses in the history of political thought; contemporary democratic theory; American political development; race and American politics; and the radical tradition (and its critics) in theory and practice. Schwartz’s teaching and published work focuses on the complex interaction among morality, ideology, and political and institutional development. He believes that political theory should not speak a ghettoized, jargon-laden “private language;” rather, it should inform public intellectual and political deliberation. He has won both the College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Teaching Award and the University’s Lindback Prize for Teaching Excellence.

His first book, The Permanence of the Political: A Democratic Critique of the Radical Thrust to Transcend Politics (Princeton, 1995) critiques the radical longing for a society that transcends particular identity and the need for politics. The book won the North American Society for Social Philosophy Prize for the best book published in 1995. His second book, The Future of Democratic Equality: Reconstructing Social Solidarity in a Fragmented United States (Routledge, fall 2007, forthcoming) cautions against a potential new form of radical orthodoxy: that universal forms of identity are repressive and homogenizing, whereas particular identities are inherently emancipatory. The work argues that defenders of a democratic conception of “difference” must not forget that “difference,” if constructed upon a terrain of radical social inequality, yields unjust inequalities in social and political power.  Schwartz has also published articles on topics ranging from just war theory and the war on terrorism to the challenges neo-liberal globalization poses for democratic egalitarian politics and policy.

Schwartz, beginning in high school with the anti-Vietnam War movement, has long been active on the democratic left. He contributes to popular publications such as Dissent and In These Times. While a Marshall Scholar at Oxford and later a graduate student at Harvard, he played an active role in the international movement against apartheid in South Africa. He serves on the National Political Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America and on the executive committee of the faculty and professional staff union, the Temple Association of University Professionals (AFT). While he prefers to teach intelligent conservative students who challenge his views as compared to simplistic radicals who try to parrot his outlook, he also has played an active mentoring role for generations of Temple students working for democratic social change. 

Schwartz parents a wonderful fourteen-year old son, Michael Migiel-Schwartz, in Ithaca, New York on weekends and May-August (the four reasons for being an academic – May, June, July, and August!) He is an expert on the social geography of the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and occasionally unintentionally kills deer without firing a shot (i.e, his car does the deed!). Born and bred in the Bronx, he is an inveterate Yankees fan – but he roots for the players, not for The Boss!