Rona Dinur is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Philosophy of the Hebrew University, focusing on moral and political philosophy. Her Ph.D. project is supervised by Prof. David Enoch and Prof. Moshe Halbertal. She started her Ph.D. studies after graduating from Harvard Law School with an LL.M in Law, where she focused on the intersection of constitutional law and moral and political philosophy. She holds an LL.B/B.A (in Law and Political Science) from the Hebrew University (summa cum laude). In between her bachelor's degree and LL.M studies she served as a law clerk in the chambers of Justice Asher Grunis, who was then the Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court.

Research:

In my dissertation project I examine the moral objection to discrimination that is perpetrated against people particularly because of their group identity, such as their race or gender. I take a novel perspective on the issue, integrating empirical studies from social cognition with conventional ethical discussion in the analytic tradition. Based on the general view that discrimination is objectionable because it violates the value of equality in its relational interpretation, I argue that discriminatory actions are objectionable due to the underlying perceptual state of the discriminator. I characterize the discriminatory perceptual state as involving perceiving the discriminated group as an inanimate object which poses a threat to society, in the particular social context in which the discriminator operates. Perceiving the discriminated group in that manner interferes with viewing the individuals belonging to it as human individuals; rather, they are perceived as an inanimate object unworthy of moral consideration