Being a teaching professor in the University of California (UC) system is a bit like being a professor at a liberal arts college, only with teaching assistants and other forms of support typical of research universities. I teach two undergrad classes every quarter, or six a year. The main differences with most of my colleagues are that, in addition to supervising graduate students, they teach four classes a year, one of which is normally a graduate class.

Being a teaching professor in the UC system is pretty great! To my knowledge, only a handful of people have held such a position in the system’s philosophy departments. One is my colleague Reuven Brandt. Another is Mara Harrell, now at the University of Virginia, who was also a teaching professor when she was our colleague at UCSD. (Check out the journal Mara edits, Teaching Philosophy, for great articles on the theory and practice of teaching.) Beyond UCSD, UC Merced, UC Riverside and UC Irvine also now have teaching professors of philosophy (although Riverside and Irvine use the title “professor of teaching.”)

Classes I regularly teach include Topics in Political Philosophy; Contemporary Moral Issues; Ethics and Society I and II; Introduction to Philosophy: Ethics; and Philosophy & Literature. In 2026 I’m excited to be teaching a brand new class, Philosophy & Animals.