About Karin Boxer

I am a disabled former philosophy professor whose work now focuses on disability and institutional design.

I spent 24 years in academia, teaching and writing primarily in ethics and moral responsibility. I am the author of Rethinking Responsibility (Oxford University Press, 2013). I earned a D.Phil. and B.Phil. in Philosophy from the University of Oxford and an A.B. in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University. I was a Marshall Scholar and Truman Scholar.

My path to this work is also personal. I have Just-Right Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. My own experience showed me how an accommodation process can involve substantial interaction and still fail to answer the fundamental question of whether an effective accommodation exists. I left academia in 2024 and launched Karin Boxer LLC in 2026.

That experience changed the questions I ask. Rather than viewing disability as a problem located primarily in individuals, I became interested in how institutions define competence, assign responsibility, organize work, and decide which forms of participation are treated as legitimate.

Those questions now shape my work on accommodation systems, disability belonging, faculty retention, and institutional design.