Filosofia

Faculty of Arts
University of Groningen

I am writing to express my interest in filling the position of “Professor of American Studies – specialization: Political Culture and Theory” at the University of Groningen. Allow me to describe for you the current state of my research and advocacy project, my professional background, as well as my teaching philosophy.

I am a PhD candidate (ABD) atthe New School for Social Research in New York working on a dissertation under the direction of Professor James Miller. I expect to complete all work for the Ph.D. by October 2012.

Let me state the reasons why I may be a suitable candidate for the aforementioned position:
My work and my professional trajectory reflects an interest of bringing moral political philosophy closer to theanalysis of international relations. Throughout my studies and research of moral and political philosophers I have realized that most of them tend to agree on the fact that our political, economic, and ecological problems have acquired a global nature while the ethical and moral meditation upon them kept always one step behind. We have not found an ethics for a world society.
This situation finds itsmost clear and dramatic instance in what has been aptly dubbed the age of genocide. In spite of the creation of supra-national organizations, the world still reflects the Westhphalian order created in 1648.

My field of study is American political theory at the New School for Social Research. My focus is on studying the impact of certain European ideas on American thought. In my work aspolitical theorist, I have tried to follow how the ideas of Europe and Latin America have influenced not only the philosophers and thinkers in the United States, but also its culture as a whole. My dissertation follows how a prominent German-American political philosopher, Leo Strauss, has been influenced by a host of European philosophers.

My dissertation focuses on the work of two politicalphilosophers: Leo Strauss and Friedrich Nietzsche. I argue that these two philosophers were political idealists when they were young men. “Political idealism” takes its bearings from the idea that there is a political solution to the major human problems. While the younger Nietzsche believed that Wagner´s art represented a political solution to the problems that afflicted late nineteenth centuryEurope, the younger Leo Strauss saw in political Zionism a way out of the dilemmas faced by the Jewish community in the early twentieth century. Strauss later on tried to probe how “political idealism” was applied to the American experience and the American Republican foundation. Furthermore, I show how Strauss was instrumental in disseminating throughout America an understanding of Nietzsche as apolitical philosopher and as a cultural icon.

As a Latin American researcher I have always seen American thought and culture in an Inter-American context. Through my work as journalist, academic, think tank researcher (in Washington DC and New York) and diplomat, I have served as an inter-cultural translator between the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin regions of the Western Hemisphere. In my work asconsultant for the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies, I have been involved in developing projects focusing on studying the culture and politics of the United States in the light of Inter-American relations.

At the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect which is housed at the Ralph Bunche Institute of International Studies in the Graduate Center at CUNY, I have witnessedthe challenges of bringing the “international community“ into agreement when it comes to preventing genocide and other mass atrocity crimes. In the Centre, my work has been threefold: on the one hand, I conduct research aiming at clarifying the framework within which the “responsibility to protect” can work. Currently, I am writing a book in Spanish for the Centre on the Responsibility to...