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The NEIU Philosophy Colloquium Series began in 2014 and has been a regular department-sponsored event since Spring 2018. Its purpose is to give the Northeastern community access to all of the richness and diversity of contemporary professional philosophy. The Colloquium Series also provides professional philosophers with the opportunity to experience Northeastern firsthand and meet our students and faculty in an academic setting. All of the talks are free and open to the public.

Upcoming Talks

Raja Halwani, Professor of Philosophy, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

"The Ethics of Looksism"

Thursday, September 18, 2025

Room Bernard J. Brommel Hall 102

Looksism is choosing one’s sexual or romantic partner based (at least partly) on their
looks, including their age, race, ethnicity, body size (insofar as these manifest themselves
outwardly or physically). Recently, some philosophers have argued that some forms of
looksism are morally wrong. In this presentation, I examine a couple of these
philosophers’ arguments and criticize them. I then argue that looksism is not only morally
permissible, but also often morally good.

is a professor of philosophy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
He is the author of Virtuous Liaisons: Care, Love, Sex, and Virtue Ethics (2003); of Love,
Sex, and Marriage: A Philosophical Introduction (2010; 2nd ed., 2018); of Sexual
Orientation: A Philosophical Investigation (forthcoming); the co-author of The Israeli-
Palestinian Conflict: Philosophical Essays on Self-Determination, Terrorism, and the
One-State Solution (2008); the editor of Sex and Ethics: Essays on Sexuality, Virtue, and
the Good Life (2007); and the lead editor of Queer Philosophy: Presentations of the
Society for Lesbian and Gay Philosophy, 1998-2008 (2012) and of the seventh and eighth
editions of The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings (2017; 2022).
 

Past Talks

2024-2025

• , Ph.D., Loyola University Chicago, "Beyond the Value Free Ideal in Law & Science?"
• , University of Illinois at Chicago, "Doing Oligarchy Better: On the Politics of Effective Altruism.”
• Stacey Goguen, ����Թ�,  “Why Politics & Religion Belong in Science (and what we still get wrong about values and objectivity).”
• , Loyola University Chicago, "The Asymmetry in Threat Perception: Military Threats v. Ecological Threats."
• Nathan Wood, City Colleges of Chicago, "The Real Value of Anti-Realism."

2023-2024

• , Oakton College, "Better Living through Pessimism."
• , Governors State University, "The Fire Next Time: Prescribed Burns as Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Epistemic Reparations."
• , Loyola University Chicago, "Justice and The Monty Hall Problem of Public Health."
• Will Behun, McHenry County Community College, "Not so much heretical as insane: myth in classical Gnosticism."
• , Loyola University Chicago, "The Problem of Misplaced Trust and Distrust."

2022-2023

• , University of Illinois at Chicago, "Berkeley's Political Metaphysics."
• , Loyola University Chicago, "Extracting Gold from the Counterfeiter’s Bag: al-Ghazālī on the Tradition of Philosophy in Islam."
• Sophia Mihic, ����Թ�, "Freedom, Property, and Privacy: The Political Economy of Abortion and Reproduction After Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization."
• , Chicago-Kent College of Law, "The Inherent Problem with Mass Incarceration."
• , University of Chicago, "Do Billionaires Deserve Their Wealth?"
• Shireen Roshanravan, ����Թ�, "Pretending-to-be and Masterful Political Performance."

2019-2020

• , Carnegie Mellon University, "Painfully Literal Dudes."
• , Free University, Amsterdam, “How Epistemic Injustice Can Deepen Disagreement.”
• , University of Chicago, “Is There Such a Thing as being Good or Bad at Philosophy?"
• , Grand Valley State University, "Collapsing Life and Art."
• , ����Թ�, “Against a Single History: Luxemburg and a Decolonial Critique of Political Economy.”

2018-2019

• , University of Minnesota, “Recovering Early Modern Women Writers: Some Tensions.”
• *, Marquette University, “ A Relational Analysis of Oppression: Group Injustice and Institutional Mediation.”
• , Northwestern University, “Propaganda for Realists.”
• , Northwestern University, “What does it Mean to Have a Revolution in Culture? Frantz Fanon’s Speculative Method of Critique.”
• , Manchester University, “Philosophy, Democracy, and Mass Incarceration.”
• , Michigan State University, “Theorizing Testimony in Argumentative Contexts.”

2017-2018

• , Vanderbilt University, “The Antinomies of Meta-philosophy.”
• *, University of California, Berkeley, “Dominus before Domination: Harriet Jacobs and the Meaning of Slavery.” 

2016-2017

• John Casey, ����Թ�, "Argument Pacifism."

2015-2016

• , Northwestern University, "Does Everything have a Cause?"
• , Northwestern University, "What is Punishment?"

2014-2015

• , Vanderbilt University, "Why We Argue: A Deliberative Democratic Reply to Plato.”

*Denotes scholar as a graduate of ����Թ�