Department of PhilosophyI am a fourth-year Ph.D. student. I completed my undergraduate degree at Dartmouth College, where I studied both Philosophy and Government. I wrote my senior honors thesis on the ethics of violent political revolutions. Prior to starting my Ph.D., I worked at the Yale Program on Financial Stability. At Yale, I studied governments’ responses to financial crises. These included changes to deposit-insurance systems, market-support programs, and liquidity reserve requirements.
Ezekiel Vergara
B.A. in Philosophy and Government, Dartmouth College, 2021
Research Interests
My research interests primarily lie in political philosophy, ethics, and PPE. I am writing my dissertation on the following question: When, if ever, is it morally permissible for states to engage in economic statecraft? I argue that, in order to determine whether economic statecraft is morally permissible, we must be sensitive to the demands of global economic justice. I defend scalar views of global economic justice. These views hold that one’s obligations of global economic justice vary in relation to the rules that facilitate cooperation or coercion. I then argue that, given current empirical realities, economic statecraft is consistent with the demands of global economic justice. I contend that economic sanctions and trade-related positive incentives are morally permissible if they meet certain conditions. Yet, I hold that we must be sensitive to the empirical features of economic sanctions and trade-related positive incentives to determine which moral constraints apply.
Aside from my dissertation, I have broad interests in global justice, intergenerational justice, liberal political thought, the ethics of self-defense, the ethics of AI, and philosophical methodology.
