About

Hi, I’m Daniel. Welcome to my website.

I was born in Portland, Oregon and raised there and elsewhere along the west coast. My upbringing was working class and filled with blue collar labor starting in my early teens. My father ran a pottery business and I’d work every other weekend for him selling pottery downtown Portland. I also worked different jobs from being a hod carrier (assistant to a brick layer), a construction laborer, to a number of sales and other odd jobs.

I discovered my passion during my experience in college in a small town in Southern Oregon. It was through reading poetry and Beat literature that the world of thought opened up for me. While the Beat poets were immensely impressive to me, and they were very learned and erudite, there were clearly holes in their theories and even in their own reading. These shortcomings led me to go far beyond the bibliography of thought they opened for me. I was drawn into a new orbit of desire and I began to devour philosophical texts.

After college I ended up becoming a part of a wider community focused on addressing conflict resolution and inter-religious dialogue. I began to experience this work as a calling, and the work of interfaith bridge building became one of my core paths. I consider this a spiritual event although it did not entail a religious conversion other than bringing me towards the Christianity of my youth in a way that is fuller and more critical.

These are my two paths: the world of ideas, especially philosophy and religion and interfaith conflict resolution. I teach philosophy at George Washington University as Professorial Lecturer and I am a professor (adjunct) at Marymount University where I teach social and political thought, ethics and introduction to philosophy. I also teach seminars to graduate students and I offer seminars for inmates at the DC jail.

I teach out of love for the potential to reach students. My goal is to inspire them to see the world differently, to share frameworks for theorizing their lives and the world around them. I am also interested in teaching and learning alternatives to the contemporary neoliberal university. From 2012 – 2015, I served as Professor of Critical Theory and Dean of Student Affairs at the Global Center for Advanced Studies.

As a peacemaker I am the Director of Programs and a Producer at Unity Productions Foundation, a media and educational organization based in Washington, DC that makes documentary films and promotes nationwide education about Islam and Muslim culture.

I have also been working on an ongoing documentary film series called Insurrections that aims to understand the uprisings and movements of our time, specifically the uprisings that swept the globe from 2010 to roughly 2014 starting in Tottenham, to Cairo, to Greece, to Oakland, New York and elsewhere. What is the meaning of these events and what is the future of radical emancipatory political movements? This film series interviews important philosophers and theorists to shed light on this topic.

I received my Ph.D. from the European Graduate School, division of Philosophy, Art, and Critical Thought under the supervision of one of the most important living philosophers, Alain Badiou. I also received a Masters of Arts in philosophy and ethics from American University in Washington, DC where I wrote my thesis on Žižek’s critique of liberalism.

This work won first place in 2012 and 2014 at the Žižek Studies conference. I then went on to study directly with Žižek and Badiou at the EGS in order to develop my ideas. My Ph.D. studies set me on a lifelong path of research and writing in philosophy.

I am also affiliated as a Scholar with the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding in Washington, D.C. where I write and present on Islamophobia, Muslims in the west and interfaith dialogue.

My C.V. can be found here.

All content on this site ©Daniel Tutt, 2016.