UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMS IN

Hofstra graduate Noël Carroll ’69 (BA in Philosophy) is a recipient of the inaugural HCLAS Spotlight Award.
Dr. Carroll is a distinguished professor of philosophy and film studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and one of the leading philosophers of art and aesthetics in the United States. He is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work in the philosophy of film.

Michelle Hart ’11, whose novel “We Do What We Do in the Dark” is receiving acclaim from Time magazine, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, discusses why she paired her studies in English with a major in philosophy. “I ended up taking a course on the philosophy of literature [with Dr. Mark McEvoy] and very quickly realized how closely linked those two subjects were. Together, I felt they gave my life purpose and shape,” she said.

Punishment for the Failed Criminal, a paper by philosophy major Evan Lopes ’23, has been published in the undergraduate philosophy journal Ephemeris. In the piece, Lopes analyzes the similarities and differences between successful and attempted but failed criminal acts. The measure of punishment for each should be the same, he argues, whether or not there was resulting harm.

Students Rocco Distefano and Simon Ignat were awarded Hofstra’s Firestone Fellowship, an award that allowed them to continue research projects over the summer. Distefano focused his research on systematic racism and its impact on immigrant populations on Long Island from the 1920s to 1990s, and Ignat studied the works of Nietzsche.

A high school introduction to philosophy class sparked an obsession for Casey Grippo. At Hofstra, she immersed herself in the study of philosophy and Europe’s age of enlightenment. Casey continued her studies at two preeminent universities: University of Luxembourg and Boston University.

Dr. Terry Godlove, professor of philosophy and religion, has written “Kant and the Meaning of Religion,” published by Columbia University Press. The book discusses how Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of religion contributed to the secular age, in which belief and especially unbelief have become real options for millions of people.

Eric Lopez ’05, ’11 has advised policymakers, met royalty and U.S. presidents, and shaped conversations about educational access and economic issues. As a first-generation Hofstra student raised in the Bronx, New York, he never imagined leading a career that would take him to the White House and international stages.