Dr. Eric Thomas Weber  joined the faculty of the Educational Policy and Evaluation Department in Fall 2018 after two years in the Philosophy Department. Before that, he was assistant and then associate professor of public policy leadership at the University of Mississippi, where he taught from 2007 to 2016. His Ph.D. is in philosophy with focuses on ethics and political philosophy approached from the tradition of classical American philosophy. In addition to advocating for an experimentalist outlook in ethics, he applies ethics to leadership and public policy. He aims to follow John Dewey's example, championing public philosophy, engaging both with scholars and the public sphere.

Weber’s books include a critique of John Rawls’s work, titled Rawls, Dewey, and Constructivism (2010), offering a Deweyan alternative that calls for more robust democratic education. His next book presented an experimentalist approach to ethics in public policy in Morality, Leadership, and Public Policy (2011). Work on that project revealed for him the need for addressing the challenges for a theory of democratic leadership, which he wrote about next in Democracy and Leadership (2013). That project inspired his next book, an application of his theory of democratic leadership to problems in the state of Mississippi, titled Uniting Mississippi (2015). In 2021, he published an edited collection of John Dewey’s public writings, titled America’s Public Philosopher, with Columbia University Press. Presently he is completing work on his latest book, on the role of culture in justice, titled A Culture of Justice. It offers an account of how and why the symbols we use, the beliefs we hold, and our educational practices and institutions play vital roles in the advancement of justice.

• In 2017, he accepted on behalf of The Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA) the American Philosophical Association and the Philosophy Documentation Center's Prize for Excellence and Innovation in Philosophy Programs. 
• In 2011, Dr. Weber received the Cora Lee Graham Award for the Outstanding Teaching of Freshmen in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Mississippi.

• In 2012, he was honored with the Thomas F. Frist Student Service Award conferred by the University of Mississippi.
   
• From 2011-2014, he served as Chair of the American Philosophical Association's Committee on Public Philosophy.
   
• From 2009 to present, he has served as Executive Director of the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA).