Join us in welcoming Jessica Flanigan as the new editor of Public Affairs Quarterly! Her first issue, Vol. 39, Iss. 3, is now available online.

Public Affairs Quarterly publishes work in all areas of practically engaged normative philosophy, broadly understood to include normative work on issues of public concern in applied moral, social, political, and legal philosophy. The journal welcomes contributions from a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches on any practically oriented topic in any of these areas. Public Affairs Quarterly is published by the University of Illinois Press on behalf of North American Philosophical Publications.

Dr. Jessica Flanigan is the Richard L. Morrill Chair in Ethics and Democratic Values at the University of Richmond, where she teaches Leadership Ethics, Ethical Decision Making in Healthcare, and Critical Thinking. Her research addresses the ethics of public policy, medicine, and business. In Pharmaceutical Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2017), she defends rights of self-medication. In Debating Sex Work (Oxford University Press, 2019), she defends the decriminalization of sex work. Flanigan has also published in journals such as Philosophical Studies, The Journal of Business Ethics, Leadership, The Journal of Moral Philosophy, and the Journal of Political Philosophy. 

Q: What are you looking forward to as editor? Do you have any specific goals for your tenure?

A: I am looking forward to reading essays that introduce me to new ideas I’ve never considered before! I especially love reading philosophical work that is creative and freethinking and work that takes on issues that really matter for people’s everyday lives. I hope that younger scholars consider PAQ as a place to send their work for a quick turnaround and high-quality comments and that more established scholars continue to send work on any applied topics to PAQ going forward.

Q: Are there any specific topics or areas of scholarship that you would like to publish more of during your tenure as editor?

A: I’d love it if PAQ continued to expand its coverage of topics in medical and public health ethics. PAQ also has had a recent series of papers on the ethics of the family, and I’d love to see even more engagement with work that addresses the ethics of interpersonal relationships and social norms. Additionally, I hope that PAQ will continue to be a journal that considers philosophical work that engages with a diverse range of styles, historical traditions, and political viewpoints.

Q: Are there any articles that have been published in previous issues of Public Affairs Quarterly that you’ve enjoyed reading or that stand out to you?

A: I loved Bouke de Vries’ essay, “Should Men Vacuum More”? which is open access on the Scholarly Publishing Collective. I also thought that the recent special issue on Effective Altruism was excellent, and Brooks Sommerville’s “Kantian Case against Sensitivity Readers” is just the kind of work on a relatively new topic that I’d love to see more of going forward! Jason Brennan did a great job editing the PAQ over the past few years, and I hope that the upcoming issues can meet his high standards.

Outgoing Editor:

Thank you to outgoing editor Jason Brennan for his work on Public Affairs Quarterly! He has been editor of the journal since Vol. 35, Iss. 2, was published in April 2021. Brennan is the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. He is an associate editor of Social Philosophy and Policy and he recently completed a $2.1 million project on “Markets, Social Entrepreneurship, and Effective Altruism,” funded by the Templeton Foundation. A prolific scholar, Brennan has published 18 books, over 60 peer-review journal articles, over 30 chapters in edited anthologies, and over 50 trade articles.

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Topics covered by Public Affairs Quarterly include subjects of long-standing debate such as abortion, capital punishment, and just war theory; more recently emerging subjects of controversy such as climate change, affirmative action, commercial surrogacy, and the treatment of non-human animals; topics relating to current social movements such as those concerning racism and sexual harassment, and to current technological developments such as those involving gene editing and autonomous weapons systems; and cutting-edge issues that are just now on the verge of attracting attention from philosophers.

Submissions of a more general nature that address implications for a cluster of such issues rather than focusing on a single issue are also welcome, such as papers that advance claims that have practical implications but are about more general subjects such as race, sexuality, gender, social identity, nationalism, paternalism, privacy, distributive justice, economic fairness, political inequality, commodification, or desert.

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