Professional Summary
Cassie Finley is a philosopher interested in the intellectual and moral virtues of dialogue. Drawing together work on pedagogy, character education, and virtue epistemology—as well as her experience teaching dialogue-centered philosophy courses—she is developing a “Virtue Dialogue” framework for cultivating moral, intellectual, and civic virtues through, and for the sake of, engaging in meaningful dialogues. Her current research focuses on articulating a virtue dialogue account of (un)grading in connection with issues of epistemic injustice in education, as well as the (dis)alignment between specific pedagogical practices and their purported aims in civil discourse initiatives.
Her dissertation, “On the Unity of Moral and Intellectual Virtue”, defended a “Strong” unity of the virtues—arguing that distinctions between virtues are ultimately illusory, and in order to have a coherent conception of virtue, there can be only one. As the inaugural Dialogue & Civil Disagreement Fellow at Wesleyan University, she spent 2024-25 designing virtue-dialogue-based courses for undergraduate students and supporting the work of the Intercollegiate Civil Disagreement Partnership (ICDP). In 2025-2026, she continued her work with the ICDP as a Civil Discourse Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard’s Ethics Center 2025-2026, where she designed a number of pedagogical resources and activities aimed at promoting virtues through dialogue, and co-organized the inaugural Philosophy of Dialogue conference.
Education
PhD: University of Iowa 2025 (Philosophy)
Positions and Work Experience
2023 -2024 Lecturer, Pacific University, Oregon
2024 -2025 Dialogue & Civil Disagreement Fellow, Wesleyan University, Connecticut
2025 -2026 Civil Discourse Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University, Massachusetts