Jack Russell Weinstein

Weinstein’s additional areas of research is the systematizing of public philosophy as a sub-discipline. In particular, his two essays, The Case Against Political Philosophy (2022) and What Does Public Philosophy Do: Hint: It Does Not Make Better Citizens (2014), he argues that public philosophy should be seen as a sub-discipline in itself, and not a form of political editorializing or a dumbing-down of the more academic philosophical inquiry.

Weinstein currently teaches at the University of North Dakota. In 2007, he received the Individual Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award at UND.

He married Kim Donehower, and later had a daughter (Adina Weinstein in October 2005.) Adina Weinstein is currently a Black Lives Matter and Queer Rights advocate in North Dakota.

Weinstein is the author of two books in the Wadsworth Philosophers Series, On Adam Smith (2001) and On MacIntyre (2003), and Adam Smith's Pluralism: Rationality, Education, and the Moral Sentiments (Yale U.P.). He has edited several collections and journals, as well as numerous articles, essays and reviews on topics such as philosophy of education and moral theory, as well as a number of presentations on the philosophy of Adam Smith. He is committed to the project of advancing public philosophy, working with the Institute for Philosophy in Public Life to bring philosophy to the general public while simultaneously making a place for public philosophy work in the academy.

Weinstein was named plaintiff in a class action suit (Cianfrocco & Weinstein v. Clinton County Board of Elections, 1989—the name is not exact) intended to give college students in New York the right to vote in their college towns, and leading a contingent of over a hundred students who marched on the State House in Albany, New York. That same day, his image appeared in the front page of more than fifty newspapers across the state. He and others were protesting tuition hikes in the State University System by hosting a mock funeral to portray "the death of public education." The image showed Weinstein lying blindfolded by a baby's coffin.

Jack Russell Weinstein (born October 1, 1969) is an American philosopher specializing in the history of philosophy, political philosophy, Adam Smith, and contemporary liberal theory. He is currently a Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Dakota. He is the director of The Institute for Philosophy in Public Life and the host of the public radio show Why? Philosophical discussions about everyday life. He was an influential student activist in the 1980s.

Jack Russell Weinstein was born on October 1, 1969, in New York City to painter Joyce Ellen, and American Jazz musician Mark Weinstein. He attended college at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. It was there that his academic interest flourished, where he was able to pursue his long-held interests in reading, writing, and learning in the free university environment. He began his studies in English but quickly changed to Philosophy with a minor in Political Science. While in school, Weinstein participated actively in politics and became a political organizer for student issues around New York state. Receiving his undergraduate diploma in 1991, he went on to graduate school at Boston University, where he received his M.A. in 1996 and Ph.D. in 1998, both in Philosophy.

Weinstein has also argued that the world has experienced a second sexual revolution. “The 1960s put forth the idea that sex for pleasure was worth celebrating, and that women as well as men deserved to experience it. It’s a realization we’re still negotiating. The last decade, however, has seen what I call the digital sexual revolution. It has shown us that sex is something that can and will happen at great distances, that one need not touch another person to be intimate. With dating apps that create a veritable supermarket of potential partners, to toys someone’s lover can operate remotely, to telephones that give each of us the ability to create pornography on a whim, we have collectively acknowledged that while sex may still involve our own body, it does not necessarily involve someone else’s. The digital revolution reaffirms that eroticism is a product of the imagination before it is a byproduct of our physiology.”