Randall Curren

University of Rochester (New York)

Title: Can Flourishing-Focused Education Policy be Compatible with Free and Equal Citizenship?

Abstract: UNESCO, the OECD, the US National Academies of Science, and other entities have embraced flourishing, in some cases sustainable flourishing, as an aspirational focus for educational policy and practice. Liberal political theorists have been mixed in their response to the idea of flourishing-focused education. Many argue that it is impossible to educate for life-long flourishing without relying on a specific conception of flourishing that many citizens could reasonably reject, and that doing so would unjustly favor some reasonable conceptions of a good life over others. This talk will examine the limitations of this argument and show how a meaningful form of education for sustainable flourishing can be compatible with free and equal citizenship.

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Bio: Randall Curren is Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Education (secondary) at the University of Rochester (New York). He was the Ginny and Robert Loughlin Founders’ Circle Member in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey for 2012-2013, and held concurrent research professorships at the University of Birmingham (UK) and the Royal Institute of Philosophy (London) in 2013-2015. His 150 works include Living Well Now and in the Future: Why Sustainability Matters (MIT Press, 2017), Patriotic Education in a Global Age (University of Chicago Press, 2018), the Handbook of Philosophy of Education (Routledge, 2023), “Philosophy of Education” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2025), and the forthcoming Cambridge Handbook of Flourishing-Focused Education: Theory, Research, and Global Contexts.​