Naomi Zack

Naomi Zack
Era	21st-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytical Philosophy Legal Positivism Non-Ideal Theory
Institutions	University of Oregon
Main interests	Philosophy of race philosophy of identity feminist theory disaster ethics

Naomi Zack is a professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon. She is a prolific author, having published seven books in addition to a large number of papers and contributed chapters in feminist ethics, particularly in areas having to deal with race or disaster. Zack has taken on a number of professional roles related to the representation of women and other under-represented groups in philosophy. Zack is also a member of the editorial boards of multiple journals, including Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, The Journal of Race and Policy, Ethnic Studies: an Interdisciplinary Journal of Culture, Race and Ethnicity, and the Radical Philosophical Review.

Education and career

Zack received her bachelor's degree from New York University in 1966, and received a doctorate from Columbia University in 1970. She served as an adjunct assistant professor of philosophy at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for the 1990-91 school year, and accepted an appointment as an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Albany in 1998. She accepted an appointment as an affiliated member in the Department of Women's Studies at the University of Albany in 1993, and was promoted to Associate Professor of Philosophy in 1998. She was promoted to full professor for the 2000-1 school year (while she also served as the Director of the Doctor of Arts in Humanistic Studies Program), before accepting a position as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon in 2001.

Research areas and publications

Zack's research has ranged broadly over such fields as philosophy of race, philosophy of identity, feminist theory and politics, disaster ethics, and the history of philosophy. Zack has published five academic books: Race and Mixed Race in 1993, Bachelors of Science: Seventeenth Century Identity, Then and Now in 1996, Philosophy of Science and Race in 2002, and Inclusive Feminism: A Theory for the Third Wave in 2009. She's also published one textbook, Thinking About Race, in 1998, and one pop philosophy book, The Handy Philosophy Answer Book, in 2010.

In Ethics for Disaster, Zack examined the social construction of disasters and attempted to produce a model of disasters and a cohesive set of "disaster ethics." Zack assumes an optimistic view of the social contract. Zack views governments not only as having an obligation to step in and assist after disaster has occurred, but also as having a positive obligation to plan for how to respond to likely types of disasters in advance. Zack views governments not as having an ethical obligation to provide their citizenry with the best assistance they can during a disaster scenario, but as having an obligation to provide them with the best assistance that the government could have potentially planned for. Zack also goes to great lengths to highlight the differences in how "disasters" are portrayed depending on the political, racial, and socio-economic class to which they occur.