Disagreement & the Limits of Toleration

Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration

A Pluralism Initiative Event featuring Teresa Bejan, Professor of Political Theory at University of Oxford

In Conversation with Helena de Bres, Professor of Philosophy

Professor Bejan’s research brings historical perspectives to bear on questions in contemporary political theory and philosophy. She has published extensively on themes of free speech, civility, tolerance and equality in historical contexts ranging from ancient Athens to 20th-century analytic political philosophy. 

Professor Bejan's first book, Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration (Harvard University Press, 2017), examined contemporary calls for civility in light of 17th-century debates about religious toleration. It defended an ideal of ‘mere civility’ consistent with American free speech fundamentalism derived from Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island. The book was called "penetrating and sophisticated" by The New York Times and has been widely reviewed in scholarly and popular publications. Her second book, First Among Equals: Visions of Equality before Egalitarianism (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2026), explores how and why an ancient commonplace—that all human beings are somehow “equal”—became an effectual premise of political argument in early modern England, and what this might mean for our own efforts to redeem equality as a political ideal, here and now.

In person and Zoom livestream: https://wellesley.zoom.us/j/95336355628