Tony Lang

The Hayseed Scholar Podcast

Professor Anthony F. Lang, Jr. visits the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Tony grew up in Cleveland in a big Catholic family, and he went to Catholic schools all the way through college at Notre Dame, where he took a class with Alasdair MacIntyre. Tony shares how he became interested in philosophy, and then political science, pursuing his PhD at Johns Hopkins where he took classes from William Connolly, David Campbell, and developed his dissertation under the guidance of Stephen David. He discusses his first job at the American University in Cairo, his return to the US to work at the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs and then his eventual move to St. Andrews where he still works today. Tony chats about the International Ethics section of the ISA and how it developed into the friendly environment it is today for junior scholars. He talks about his approach to writing, and how writing fiction is completely different from academic writing but how the two enrich one another for him. He concludes with some reflections on his Ethics Distinguished Scholar roundtable at the most recent ISA.