The Philosophy Department is delighted to announce that Philosophy PhD student Will Bell has successfully defended his dissertation On the Enforceability of Rights: Forfeiture and Reclamation. The dissertation committee members were Kit Wellman (chair), Anne Margaret Baxley, Julia Driver, and Kimberly Ferzan (University of Pennsylvania). In his dissertation, Will defends a a rights forfeiture theory of punishment alleges, on which the rights we possess are conditional upon our treatment of others, and argues for several novel conclusions, including that rights can be reclaimed through non-penal responses to wrongdoing and that injuries sustained as a result of defensive force can reduce a wrongdoer's subsequent liability to punishment. Will's work has appeared in Philosophical Studies, Religious Studies, and the Oxford Handbook of Punishment Theory and Philosophy. Congratulations, Dr. Bell!
