Johannes Himmelreich

• 2024 Spring
  • PAI 796 Philosophy and Ethics of Data Science
• 2023 Summer
  • PAI 755 Public Administration and Democracy
• 2023 Spring
  • PAI 796 Philosophy and Ethics of Data Science
• 2022 Fall
  • PAI 700 Selected Topics - Ethics of Emerging Technology
• 2022 Spring
  • PAI 730 Problems in Public Administration - Ethics for Data Science
  • PAI 755 Public Administration and Democracy

Johannes Himmelreich joined the Public Administration and International Affairs Department in the Maxwell School as a tenure-track assistant professor in fall 2019. Prior to joining Syracuse University, Himmelreich was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University from 2017-19. During his time in Silicon Valley, he consulted on tech ethics for two Fortune 500 companies, taught ethics and worked on the ethics of autonomous systems at Apple Inc. Prior to Stanford, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Humboldt University in Berlin from 2015-17, teaching classes on ethics and political philosophy. 

Himmelreich works on applied ethics and political philosophy. Currently, he is writing a book on the philosophy of data science. He has published papers on “Responsibility for Killer Robots,” on the trolley problem and the ethics of self-driving cars, as well as on embodiment in virtual reality.

Beyond this interest in ethics and technology, Himmelreich has also published on the commodification of asylum-provision services as well as on the foundations and nature of moral responsibility and blame. He argues that corporations, states and autonomous systems are agents that can be morally responsible for their actions.

Himmelreich’s work is supported by a grant of the National Endowment of the Humanities. His work has also been supported by the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100), the AI in Medicine initiative at the Presence Center of Stanford Medical School, the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA).

Himmelreich earned a Ph.D. in philosophy in 2016, a M.Sc. (with distinction) in philosophy and public policy in 2011 at the London School of Economics, and a B.A. (with honors) in 2010 in philosophy and economics from Bayreuth University. 

"Good Decisions: Data Science as a Moral Practice", Sponsored by National Endowment for the Humanities/Natl. Fndn. on the Arts & Humanities.

"ReGInA", Sponsored by Ingolstadt University of Applied Sciences.

"Promoting Research and Teaching of Ethics and Data Science", Sponsored by Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs.

"Democratic Values and Artificial Intelligence in Public Places", Sponsored by CUSE Grants - Interdisciplinary Seminar Grant.

• Journal Articles
  • Himmelreich, J. R., "Against Democratizing AI." AI & Society, 2023.
  • Himmelreich, J. R., "What Killed your Plant? Profligate Omissions and Weak Centering." Erkenntnis, 2023.
  • Himmelreich, J. R., "No Wheel but a Dial: Why and how passengers in self-driving cars should decide how their car drives." Ethics and Information Technology, 2022.
  • Himmelreich, J. R., Köhler, S., "Responsible AI through Conceptual Engineering." Philosophy & Technology, 2022.
  • Himmelreich, J. R., Honcharov, D., Young, M. M. and Soundarajan, S., "Using Artificial Intelligence to Identify Administrative Errors in Unemployment Insurance." Government Information Quarterly, 2022.
  • Himmelreich, J. R., Young, M. M., Bullock, J. and Kim, K., "Artificial Intelligence and Administrative Evil." Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, 2021.
  • Himmelreich, J. R., "Existence, Really? Tacit Disagreements about “Existence” in Disputes about Group Minds and Corporate Agents." Synthese, 2021.
  • Himmelreich, J. R., Cohen, J., "Teaching Moral Reasoning: Why and How to Use the Trolley Problem." Journal of Public Affairs Education, 2021.
  • Himmelreich, J. R., "The Disappearing Agent as an Exclusion Problem." Inquiry, 2021.
  • Himmelreich, J. R., "Ethics of Technology needs more Political Philosophy." Communications of the ACM, 2020.
  • Himmelreich, J. R., "Asylum for Sale: A Market between States that is Feasible and Desirable." Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2019.
  • Himmelreich, J. R., Lawford-Smith, H., "Punishing Groups: When External Justice Takes Priority over Internal Justice." The Monist, 2019.
  • Himmelreich, J. R., "Responsibility for Killer Robots." Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 2019.
• Book Chapters
  • Himmelreich, J. R., Lim, D., "AI and Structural Injustice: Foundations for Equity, Values, and Responsibility." In Oxford Handbook of AI Governance. Bullock, J., Chen, Y., Himmelreich, J. R., Hudson, V., Korniek, A., Young, M. and Zhang, B. (eds.) Oxford University Press, 2022.
  • Himmelreich, J. R., "Should we Automate Democracy?." Véliz, C. (ed.) Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics, 2022.
• Book Reviews
  • Himmelreich, J. R., "‘Understanding Institutions’ by F. Guala." Journal of Social Ontology, 2017.
  • Himmelreich, J. R., "‘From Individual to Collective Intentionality’ by Chant, Hindriks, Preyer (eds.)." Economics and Philosophy, 2015.
• Conference Proceeding
  • Himmelreich, J. R., Honcharov, D., Young, M. M. and Soundarajan, S., "The Right Tool for The Job? Assess." The 22nd Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, 2021.
• Policy Briefings
  • Himmelreich, J. R., Zhang, B., Weissinger, L., McMurry, N., Li, T., Scheinerman, N. and Kreps, S., "Building Robust and Ethical Vaccination Verification Systems." Brookings Tech Stream, 2021.
  • Himmelreich, J. R., "Contribution to a European Agenda for AI: Improving Risk Management, Building Strong Governance, Accelerating Education and Research." Public Consultation Response to European Commission White Paper on Artificial Intelligence , 2020.
• Public Philosophies
  • Himmelreich, J. R., "The everyday moral challenges of self-driving cars." The Conversation, The Independent, Boston Globe and others , 2018.
  • Himmelreich, J. R., "Asyl zu Verkaufen (on my ‘Asylum for Sale‘)." Helfer, Meyer and Wettig (eds.) In: ‚Wenn ich mir etwas wünschen dürfte’, 2017.

Himmelreich, J., Adams, M., American Philospohical Association, "How social experiments can and can't justify normative principles" (January, 2024)

Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA), "Ethics of Data Science" (September, 2023)

"Ethics of self-driving cars" (June, 2023)

"How social experiments can and can't justify normative principles" (June, 2023)

Bavarian Academy of Sciences, "Normative Perspectives on Responsibility in Human-AI collaborations in medicine" (June, 2023)

APA Pacific Division Meeting, "Against "Democratizing AI"" (2022 - 2022)

German Analytic Philosophy Association (GAP.11), "The Regress Problem for Experiments in Living" (2022 - 2022)

Himmelreich, J. R., Adams, M., Ethics and Public Policy Working Group, Philosophy, Politics & Economics Society, "The Regress Problem for Experiments in Living" (2022 - 2022)

Annual Meeting of the Philosophy, Politics & Economics Society, Philosophy, Politics & Economics Society, "What Experiments Can and Can’t do in Political Philosophy" (2022 - 2022)

Brown Bag Lunch Seminar , American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), Science and Technology in Government Section (2021 - 2021)

Workshop on individual responsibility for collectively caused outcomes , University of Helsinki , "Citizen Responsibility as Associative Responsibility" (2021 - 2021)

IJCAI-PRCAI 2020: International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence — Pacific Rim International Conference on AI, "Coding Caring" (2021 - 2021)

Business Ethics in the 6ix Workshop, Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University, "Should AI be governed democratically?" (2021 - 2021)

Embedding AI in Society Symposium, NC State University, "Should AI be governed democratically?" (2021 - 2021)

Information Society Project, Yale Law School, "Should AI be governed democratically?" (2021 - 2021)

Himmelreich, J. R., Young, M. M., Soundarajan, S., Honcharov, D., DG.O 2021: 22nd Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, "The Right Tool for The Job? Assessing the Use of Artificial Intelligence for Identifying Administrative Errors" (2021 - 2021)

Panel on Cyber-physical innovations, DG.O 2021: 22nd Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, "Values for AV Governance — How to overcome the conflict between efficiency and autonomy?" (2021 - 2021)

Workshop on Ethics of Technology, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, "Democratize AI?" (2020 - 2020)

Himmelreich, J. R., Young, M. M., Soundarajan, S., Honcharov, D., APPAM Fall Research Conference, "The Right Tool for the Job? Assessing the Effectiveness and Ethics of Using of Artificial Intelligence for Identifying Administrative Errors" (2020 - 2020)

Workshop on Justice in Global Economic Governance (2020 - 2020)

APPAM Fall Research Conference, "Ethics Assessments of Machine Learning Applications in Public Services: Lessons from Criminal Justice" (2019 - 2019)

Ethics of Engineering, Sonoma State University, "How (not) to think about the ethics of self-driving cars" (2019 - 2019)

NASPAA Annual Conference, "Three Misconceptions about Ethics in Data Analytics" (2019 - 2019)

Birkhead-Burkhead Award for Teaching Excellence, Department of Public Administration and International Affairs, Maxwell School at Syracuse University (2022 - 2022)

Camilla Stivers Award for best article in Perspectives on Public Management and Governance (PPMG) (2022 - 2022)

Best Research Paper Award, The 22nd Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (2021 - 2021)

European Charlemagne Youth Prize, European Parliament (2011 - 2011)