kristen monroe
Writer
About Me
AUTHOR BIO. Kristen Renwick Monroe is the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Irvine and the founding Director of the UCI Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics & Morality. She has published over 100 articles and some 20 books, including four award-winning works... Read More
AUTHOR BIO. Kristen Renwick Monroe is the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Irvine and the founding Director of the UCI Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics & Morality. She has published over 100 articles and some 20 books, including four award-winning works on moral choice: The Heart of Altruism (1996), The Hand of Compassion (2004), Ethics in an Age of Terror and Genocide (2012), and A Darkling Plain: Stories of Conflict and Humanity during War (2016). An honors graduate of Smith College and the University of Chicago, Monroe has taught at SUNY Stony Brook, NYU, Princeton, and Harvard. Her most recent book is The Unspoken Morality of Childhood: Friendship, Family, Self-Esteem, and the Wisdom of the Everyday, a collection of essays on ethics and parenthood. She is currently working on a trilogy on moral courage.
When Conscience Calls: Moral Courage in Times of Confusion and Despair (due out October 2023, University of Chicago Press) presents powerful portraits of ordinary people performing extraordinary acts—whether confronting presidents and racist mobs or simply caring for and protecting the vulnerable. From these portraits, a pattern emerges: moral courage stems not from choice but from one’s identity—who one is -- and the core values one holds, which effectively form this sense of who we are. When Conscience Calls offers a rich examination of what it means to do the right thing and why some citizens seek common ground, fight against dogma, and stand up to hate while others fall complicit or embrace anger, bitterness, and fearmongering.
Rat Finks or Morally Courageous? Rogue Republicans in the Age of Trump analyzes Republican leaders who dared to stand up to Trump when so many others did not. Analyzing John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jeff Flake, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Rick Wilson, and Miles Taylor, it finds their political courage driven by a mixture of political ambition and principled conviction to core values. Political moral courage, however, accords less respect for its opponents and is more willing to take no prisoners in the battle for what is right.
Social Science, Moral Relativism and Universal Moral Values: Moral Courage in Contemporary Liberal Democracies, Tudor England, Reformation Germany, and the Third Reich asks if there is a core to moral courage that exists regardless of the time, polity or place where it is found, or whether moral courage depends totally on the context. It offers a way to distinguish between what I consider acts of moral courage and what you might view as acts of fanaticism. The analysis features the moral courage of Thomas More – executed in – and Martin Luther and three individuals who led the Third Reich but whose claims for moral exculpation were received favorably by key courts after World War II: Albert Speer (Hitler’s architect and in charge of the purging of Jews from Berlin), Franz Stangl (head of two concentration camps), and Wilhelm Stuckart (co-author of the Nuremberg Laws and participant in the Wannsee Conference, who nonetheless euthanized his own child because he fell into the category of disabled.)
Other works include three edited volumes.
How Science Engages with Ethics and Why It Should argues that we need more evidence-based discussions in public policies and politics. It is in press at De Gruyter.
Pathways into Political Psychology, Challenges for the Future asks top scholars in political psychology about the books that inspired and shaped them and the challenges they find for the future.
A Young Man, An Ugly War, So Far from Home analyzes the letters from Monroe’s father, the American representative to the British High Commission on War Crimes in the Far East after World War II. Read Less
When Conscience Calls: Moral Courage in Times of Confusion and Despair (due out October 2023, University of Chicago Press) presents powerful portraits of ordinary people performing extraordinary acts—whether confronting presidents and racist mobs or simply caring for and protecting the vulnerable. From these portraits, a pattern emerges: moral courage stems not from choice but from one’s identity—who one is -- and the core values one holds, which effectively form this sense of who we are. When Conscience Calls offers a rich examination of what it means to do the right thing and why some citizens seek common ground, fight against dogma, and stand up to hate while others fall complicit or embrace anger, bitterness, and fearmongering.
Rat Finks or Morally Courageous? Rogue Republicans in the Age of Trump analyzes Republican leaders who dared to stand up to Trump when so many others did not. Analyzing John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jeff Flake, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Rick Wilson, and Miles Taylor, it finds their political courage driven by a mixture of political ambition and principled conviction to core values. Political moral courage, however, accords less respect for its opponents and is more willing to take no prisoners in the battle for what is right.
Social Science, Moral Relativism and Universal Moral Values: Moral Courage in Contemporary Liberal Democracies, Tudor England, Reformation Germany, and the Third Reich asks if there is a core to moral courage that exists regardless of the time, polity or place where it is found, or whether moral courage depends totally on the context. It offers a way to distinguish between what I consider acts of moral courage and what you might view as acts of fanaticism. The analysis features the moral courage of Thomas More – executed in – and Martin Luther and three individuals who led the Third Reich but whose claims for moral exculpation were received favorably by key courts after World War II: Albert Speer (Hitler’s architect and in charge of the purging of Jews from Berlin), Franz Stangl (head of two concentration camps), and Wilhelm Stuckart (co-author of the Nuremberg Laws and participant in the Wannsee Conference, who nonetheless euthanized his own child because he fell into the category of disabled.)
Other works include three edited volumes.
How Science Engages with Ethics and Why It Should argues that we need more evidence-based discussions in public policies and politics. It is in press at De Gruyter.
Pathways into Political Psychology, Challenges for the Future asks top scholars in political psychology about the books that inspired and shaped them and the challenges they find for the future.
A Young Man, An Ugly War, So Far from Home analyzes the letters from Monroe’s father, the American representative to the British High Commission on War Crimes in the Far East after World War II. Read Less