Faculty Spotlight: Q&A with Kobi Finestone, PhD

The USD College of Arts and Sciences (the college) hired 14 new faculty members in three distinctive themes – Borders and Social Justice, Technology and the Human Experience and Climate Change and Environmental Justice – this past fall.

As part of the university's commitment to academic excellence, the college endeavored to assemble a cohort of teacher-scholars who offer a strong contribution to the diversity and excellence of USD through teaching, scholarship, service and collaboration.

This spring semester, the college is featuring each new faculty member with a Q&A series every week. Each spotlight highlights their professional journeys, academic expertise, research and their goals for fostering academic and personal growth within the USD community.

Learn more about Assistant Professor of Department of Philosophy Kobi Finestone, PhD, his background and his passion for research and teaching in the Q&A below. 

Cluster-Theme: Borders and Social Justice

Q: Please share your name, title, department and the subjects or courses you will be teaching at USD.

A: My name is Kobi Finestone, and I am an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy. I will be teaching Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Political Philosophy and Philosophy of Science.

Q: What key experiences have shaped your career and where you are today? 

A: It was the 2008 Financial Crisis. It absolutely shook my world. Beyond of course the immediate financial effects it had on my life, it confused me at the time that no one had “seen it coming.” Ever since, I have been deeply interested in how we can understand economic and political processes, predict them and even under certain circumstances, control them. And it was in the immediate aftermath of the crisis that I went off to university. At the time, and really ever since, I have been trying, at least to the best of my limited abilities, to make some headway in that direction.

Q: What sparked your interest in the Borders and Social Justice cluster-theme, and what drew you to this particular focus? How are you contributing to that focus in your work here?

A: Whenever I think about different institutions and practices, one of the first things I consider is where does the practice hold sway and where is it restricted. For example, some of my work has dealt with price gouging. One way to think about “price gouging” is to ask where do markets work and where should they be restricted. Because of this interest in restrictions and limits, borders have always been a quite natural focal point in my thought. And by the same token, by asking where and when some practice works, there is an implicit moral claim at play. Asking where do markets work, is in another sense asking is it just to act that way in the here and now.

Q: What aspects of joining the University of San Diego community are you most excited about?

A: The students. I’ve always enjoyed teaching. Getting to bounce ideas off of students, hearing their thoughts, and challenging their preexisting beliefs is deeply important for me as not only an instructor but also as a scholar. I am all too aware of how easy it is to go through life without asking some of the questions that matter most, not only about the world but about ourselves. In so far as I, as a teacher, can help students to ask questions about the world and to question their own distinct place in it, then I feel I’m living at least something approximating a life worth living.

Q: How do you envision your course curriculum contributing to the academic and personal growth of USD students?

A: I think my courses, especially the philosophy, politics and economics classes, can provide USD students with the analytic resources to understand the social world better, see how the social sciences intersect and interact with one another and encourage students to critique their own place as individuals in a complex and all too often impersonal modern world. I’m not deluded enough to think my classes will, can, or even should provide my students with all the answers – or even many answers. But it is my hope that my classes can get students to ask some of the right questions and instill in them the passion for trying to answer them.

Q: What current research projects are you working on or interested in, and how do they align with your cluster theme? 

A: Right now I’m working on a philosophy of monetary policy — basically how we measure and control inflation. I am attempting to understand how values are embedded in our social scientific practices and to what extent, if any, these values can make monetary policy ineffective, dangerous or simply suspect. Because money, and more broadly the financial system, is global, there is a direct alignment with the Borders and Social Justice cluster. In trying to understand how monetary policy can and should be made, inevitably I am drawn to questions about what we owe to those right across the border as well as those all the way across the world.

Q: What’s an interesting or unique fact about yourself that others might not know?

A: Honestly, this is never a question that I know how to answer, but I’ll give it a shot. For undergrad, I was one of two Americans in my year at the London School of Economics. Now that isn’t something “unique,”but you’ll have to admit that being one of two is quite close to being unique. Whether it is interesting, I don’t feel I’m in a position to judge one way or the other.