Jeanne Proust of UCSC’s Center for Public Philosophy explores the philosophical and ethical questions behind technology, politics, and social change

 

Jeanne Proust has studied Humanities, Philosophy and Visual Arts in Bordeaux, Berlin, and Paris. She has been teaching Philosophy for the last 14 years in the US and is actively involved in the Center for Public Philosophy at UC Santa Cruz, where she served as director from 2023-2024. She currently holds the position of Vice President of the Public Philosophy Network. Her PhD dissertation (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) focused on the pathologies of willpower, both in philosophical and psychological perspectives, but her interests are wide: among many fields, she does research in Ethics, Philosophy of Technologies, Bioethics, Feminist theory, and Aesthetics. She taught at different universities in New York, advocating for a widening of philosophical education beyond the Academia frontiers by participating in different events open to the general public. She gives many public talks, volunteers in prison (Rikers Island, San Quentin), collaborates on podcast projects (she produced her own, “Can You Phil It?”), and regularly organizes public events in Philosophy. She also collaborates with artists on her photography, drawing and painting works. With the Center for Public Philosophy, she helped launch the first Tech Ethics Bowl in the Bay area, and spearheaded the first Santa Cruz edition of the Night of Ideas. This year’s Night of Ideas is coming up on April 4, 2025, from 5 to 9 PM, at UCSC’s Institute for Arts and Sciences, at 100 Panetta Avenue, at the corner of Delaware Avenue on the westside of Santa Cruz.

Jeanne has recently started her own philosophical counseling practice, open to individuals seeking to expand their worldview, and to examine their values and life concerns through the lens of philosophical inquiry.