© John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (CC BY 4.0)
Elizabeth Anderson
Elizabeth Anderson studied political philosophy under John Rawls at Harvard and later joined the faculty of the University of Michigan. In 2013 she was asked to name her own professorship at the university; she chose to honor John Dewey, whom she admired for his emphasis on “the ways society ought to be organized, rather than personal decisions of the individual.” In her book Private Government, Anderson criticizes the “open-ended authority of managers,” noting that “efficient employment contracts” can never “specify precisely everything a worker might be asked to do.”