Sally Scholz

Sally J. Scholz (born 1968) is an American Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University and former editor of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. Her research focuses on social philosophy, political philosophy, and feminist theory. Her early work involves issues of violence against women, oppression and peacemaking, and then progresses to ethics of advocacy and violence against women in conflict settings, including war rape and just war theory. Her recent research involves these issues in addition to solidarity. She has published four single-author books and edited three academic journals, among many other publications.

Education and career

Scholz received her Bachelor of Arts degree from University of Portland in 1989, with a double major in Philosophy and Theology and a minor in French. She received her Master of Arts in philosophy in 1991 and her Ph.D. in philosophy in 1993, both from Purdue University. She is currently a member of the American Philosophical Association (APA) Board as Chair of the Committee of Lectures, Publications and Research and serves as vice president of the North American Society for Social Philosophy. She finds all three types of solidarity importantly distinct, although they do have some unifying characteristics. Scholz goes to great efforts to avoid vagueness when discussing concepts, providing concrete articulations of concepts like 'injustice' and 'oppression,' rather than resorting to vague or demagogic treatments of such concepts. Scholz argues that political solidarity is a moral relation among humans; political solidarity with non-human animals, then, is not possible but political solidarity on behalf of nonhuman animals is. Some ecofeminists have challenged her on this point, seeking to conceptualize solidarity with non-humans. Scholz has suggested that a more fruitful approach is to think of the moral relations of social solidarity with non-human animals.