Draft:Leo Zaibert

Leo Zaibert (born 14 August 1966) is an academic working in the fields of ethics, political philosophy and the philosophy of law, with a particular emphasis on penal theory. He is the author of over 100 publications, including three sole-authored books, and several edited collections. Since 2022 he is the (inaugural) Andreas von Hirsch Professor of Penal Theory and Ethics in the University of Cambridge.

Education and Career

From 1984 to 1989 Zaibert studied law at Universidad Santa Maria, in Caracas, Venezuela. In 1991 he began graduate work in philosophy at the Universidad Simon Bolivar, also in Caracas – which at the time was the best Department of Philosophy in the country. In 1992 he transferred to the University at Buffalo (UB) where in 1997 he obtained his PhD in philosophy.

Zaibert's PhD dissertation was titled Intentionality and Blame: A Study on the Foundations of Culpability, and it was jointly supervised by James B. Brady and Barry Smith. The dissertation won the “Perry Dissertation Award” from the UB Department of Philosophy. Bettween 1997 and 2004 Zaibert held tenure-track appointments at the Universidad Simon Bolivar, Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids Michigan, and at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, where he held a tenured appointment from 2004-2009. Between 2009 and 2022 Zaibert was a Professor of Philosophy at Union College, serving for 13 years as Chair of the Department and holding the position of William D. Williams Professor of Philosophy, Law, and Humanities.

He has also held visiting posts at a number of universities, such as Amherst College, the University of Geneva, and the University of Toronto.

In 2022 Zaibert was elected to the Hirsch Professorship of Penal Theory and Ethics in Cambridge University, where he serves as Director of the Centre for Penal Theory and Ethics in the Institute of Criminology.

Honors and Awards

Zaibert has been an NEH Fellow, a Humboldt Fellow, and an H. L. A. Hart Fellow (at Oxford University).

Research Activities

Zaibert’s main are of interest concerns our (individuals and institutions) responses to perceived wrongdoing. This preoccupation was already visible in his PhD dissertation, which was devoted to understanding blame – blame being one of the most fundamental possible reactions to perceived wrongdoing. Zaibert’s concern with blame evolved into a concern with punishment; on his account the two phenomena are closely connected. Later in his career he developed a further interest in forgiveness (or mercy – he tends to use the two expressions as synonyms), as a particularly difficult and particularly under-researched topic.

Zaibert serves on the Editorial Board of several leading journals in his field, including Law and Philosophy, Criminal Law and Philosophy, and on one of the oldest general philosophy journals in the world The Monist. He is also the Series Editor for Hart’s Studies in Penal Theory and Ethics.

Bibliography

For a list of Zaibert’s publications, see here.