About

A campus and civic bridge-builder, Dr. Sarah Pessin is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver. She is the recent recipient of an ACE Fellowship (2022-2023), has served as the Director of Judaic Studies (2008-2019), serves as Interfaith Chair, and is part-time Director of Spiritual Life within Student Affairs on her campus (Jan. 1, 2024-).

Featured by the Association of American Colleges & Universities for her innovative interfaith and intercultural work, Sarah helped build and has served as Creative Director for a Holocaust Memorial Social Action Site and has won grants for her creative interfaith/intercultural civic interventions from such orgs as Interfaith America, the Mellon Foundation and the Council of Independent Colleges. Dedicated to cooperative leadership, she received an inaugural award for shared governance for her work as Faculty Senate President during the especially challenging onset of COVID (2020-2022).

Sarah is passionate about micro learning formats–such as her ever-growing Think Tiles collection and her in-progress Writers on Writing interview project. And she engages intertwined topics in Interfaith Civics, democracy, dialogue across difference, “hard hope,” coexistence, and meaning-making, as well as topics in Greek, Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thought and the philosophy of religion.

With nearly 100 publications and over 250 presentations, Sarah is the author of a book on the philosophical ethics of Solomon Ibn Gabirol (Cambridge University Press), the editor of the Jewish Tradition section of a multicultural reader, and has published in key academic resources, including the Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, Oxford Philosophical Concepts, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge Companion to Islamic Philosophy, The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Philosophy, the Routledge Handbook of Neoplatonism, and many more. She has also published op-eds with the Denver Post and Inside Higher Ed and writes popular essays about politics and hope on medium.com.

Sarah holds a PhD in Philosophy from The Ohio State University, an MA in Philosophy from Columbia University, and is also a collage artist and poet who enjoys performing stand-up comedy, playing with goats, and a good afternoon of gardening.