Susan Neiman is an American philosopher and writer. She has written extensively about the Enlightenment, moral philosophy, metaphysics, and politics. Her work demonstrates that philosophy is a living force for contemporary thought and action.
Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, during the Civil Rights Movement, Neiman left high school to join American activists working for peace and justice. She later studied philosophy at Harvard University, where she earned her PhD in 1986 under the guidance of John Rawls and Stanley Cavell. In the 80s, she spent six years in Berlin, studying at the Free University and working as a freelance writer. She was a philosophy professor at Yale and Tel Aviv University. In 2000, she took up her current position as director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam.
Neiman has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, a fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center for Studies, and a senior fellow at the American Council of Learned Societies. She is currently a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. She is the author of nine books, translated into 15 languages, which have won awards, including from PEN, the Association of American Publishers, and the American Academy of Religion. Her shorter articles have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and many other publications.
Neiman is the mother of three adult children and lives in Berlin.
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