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Waheed Hussain
Assistant Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics


Waheed Hussain is an assistant professor in the Department of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. He has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University and an A.B. in Philosophy from Princeton University. His main research interests lie in moral and political philosophy, particularly in those areas that bear on the morality of economic life.

One of his major research projects focuses on the philosophical debate about how best to understand the political concern for freedom. After formulating and defending an interpretation of this concern, he argues that the most attractive economic arrangements from the standpoint of freedom are those that extend democratic forms of decision making into economic life. An example of such an arrangement would be the codetermination system in Germany, which gives representatives of labor a significant role to play in economic decision making.

Other current projects include developing a more adequate understanding of the nature of personal autonomy and its significance in political contexts, examining the role of secondary associations in a capitalist democracy, formulating a moral contractualist account of the duties of corporations and their managers, and assessing the case for the corporation’s right (and perhaps duty) to engage in civil disobedience.

At Wharton, Professor Hussain teaches Legal Studies 210, Corporate Responsibility and Ethics and Legal Studies 226, Markets, Morality and the Future of Capitalism, which is cross-listed in both the Philosophy Department at Penn and the Program in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.

Publications
Waheed Hussain (2010), “Autonomy, Frankfurt, and the Nature of Reflective Endorsement”, Journal of Value Inquiry, Vol. 44, no.1 (March 2010)
Waheed Hussain (2009), “No More Lemmings, Please—Reflections on the Communal Authority Thesis”, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 88, supplement 4 (October 2009)
Waheed Hussain (2009), "The Most Stable Just Regime”, Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol. 40, no. 3 (Fall 2009)
Waheed Hussain (2009), “Enabling Good Housing Decisions: Choice Architecture”, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Communities and Banking, Vol. 20, no. 4 (Fall 2009)
Waheed Hussain (2007), “The Ethical Dimension of the Class Society”, Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 33, no. 2 (April 2007)

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Current Research
Waheed Hussain, Consumer Culture and the Hope for a Just and Free Capitalist Democracy
Waheed Hussain, Profit Maximization and the Boundary Problem
Waheed Hussain, Worker Autonomy and the Right of Exit
Waheed Hussain, An Alternative to the Fiduciary Theory of the Firm

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Hussain Waheed
Waheed Hussain
667 Jon M. Huntsman Hall
3730 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Phone: (215) 573-0601
whussain@wharton.upenn.edu

Personal Website

Research Interests:
Ethics; Democratic values; ethical consumerism; corporations in political life; moral aspects of labor; codetermination; theories of autonomy and freedom