Daniel Weinstock

Media contributions
"COVID-19 Q&A: Daniel Weinstock on ethics, social distancing and reopening elementary schools." McGill Reporter, 28 April 2020.
"Quebec’s surprisingly conservative approach to cannabis." Policy Options Politiques, 21 November 2019.

Professor Daniel Weinstock's research interests have spanned widely across a wide range of topics in contemporary moral and political philosophy – from the just management of ethnocultural and religious diversity in modern liberal democracies, to state policy with respect to children, families, and educational institutions.

His main research interests at present have to do with the problem of health equity, and with issues of justice and inclusion as they arise in the organization of modern cities.

The guiding thread of his research has been to connect philosophical and ethical argument with institutional reasoning. It is marked by the firm conviction that moral and political philosophers have paid insufficient attention to the institutional parameters that both enable and constrain the realization of normative ideals. His areas of expertise also include the politics of language and identity, democracy, citizenship, and pluralism.

He joined McGill’s Faculty of Law in August 2012, and was director of the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy from 2013 to 2020. He was appointed Katharine A. Pearson Chair in Civil Society and Public Policy in the Faculties of Law and of Arts on June 2020, for a seven year mandate. He started a three-year mandate as the Faculty's Associate Dean (Research) in September 2021. In September 2024 he was named a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC).  

Professor Daniel Weinstock has published many articles on the ethics of nationalism, problems of justice and stability in multinational states, the foundations of international ethics, and the accommodation of cultural and moral diversity within liberal democratic societies. He has also been an active participant in public policy in Québec, having been a member from 1997 to 1999 of a Ministry of Education working group on religion in public schools, and from 2003 to 2008, the founding director of Quebec’s Public Health Ethics Committee.

Professor Weinstock is a prize fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation (2004), and a recipient of the André-Laurendeau Prize given by the Association canadienne-française pour l’avancement des sciences (2008). A James McGill Professor from 2014 to 2020, he was awarded the 2017 Charles Taylor Prize for Excellence in Policy Research by the Broadbent Institute.

Previously a Professor of Philosophy at the Université de Montréal, Daniel Weinstock held Canadian Research Chair on Ethics and Political Philosophy. He was also the director of the Research Centre on Ethics at Université de Montréal (CRÉUM) for many years. He is also a member of Centre d'études ethniques des universités montréalaises (Université de Montréal).

He studied under Charles Taylor, and at Harvard University, he also studied under John Rawls. Professor Daniel Weinstock holds a DPhil in philosophy (Oxford), an MA in political philosophy, and a BA in French literature and political philosophy (McGill).

Recent publications

Peer-reviewed journal articles

• “A Harm Reduction Approach to the Ethical Management of the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Public Health Ethics, Volume 13, Issue 2, July 2020. Pages 166–175.
• “Are Immunity Licenses Just?” American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 20, 2020 - Issue 7. With Vardit Ravitsky.
• “Disagreement, Unenforceability, and Harm Reduction.” Health Care Analysis, Volume 28, October 2020. Pages 314–323.

Chapters in edited collections or other volumes

• “Cities, psychosis, and social defeat.” In LJ Kirmayer, CM Worthman, S Kitayama, R Lemelson, CA Cummings, eds. Culture, Mind, and Brain. Emerging Concepts, Models, and Applications. Cambridge University Press. 2020. With Firrhaana Sayanvala, Lisa Bornstein, Suparna Choudhury, Jai Shah, and Ian Gold.
• “Liberalism and Language Policy in ‘Mere Number’ Cases”. In Y Peled and D Weinstock, eds. Language Ethics. McGill-Queens Press. 2020.
• “Overcoming Toleration?” In Rainer Forst, ed. Toleration, power and the right to justification. Rainer Forst in dialogue. University of Manchester Press. 2020.
• “Should Immunity Licenses Be an Ingredient in Our Policy Response to COVID-19?” In CM Flood, V MacDonnell, J Philpott, S Thériault and S Venkatapuram, eds. Vulnerable. The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19. University of Ottawa Press. 2020.

Collections

• Interpreting Modernity: Essays on the Work of Charles Taylor. McGill-Queens University Press. 2020. Edited with Jacob T. Levy and Jocelyn Maclure.
• Language Ethics. McGill-Queens University Press. 2020. Edited with Yael Peled.

Areas of interest

Social and political philosophy; ethics of public policy; ethics of nationalism; foundations of international ethics politics of language and identity; democracy, citizenship, and pluralism; justice in multinational states; accommodation of cultural and moral diversity in democratic societies