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Christa Johnson directs the Ethics and Leadership Initiative in the Fitz Center for Leadership in Community. The Initiative includes and undergraduate certificate, internship program and other programming that combines curricular and co-curricular experiences geared toward helping students to develop, refine and articulate their values, as well as cultivate the courage to act according to those values. Students learn to be allies in their communities, and, in their own lives and professions, lead by an example of putting ethical considerations first, especially when their positions may clash with the actions of their peers or those in positions of power.

In addition, Johnson teaches and does research in Philosophy. She specializes in Normative Ethics and Moral Psychology. In normative ethics, her primary interest is in nonconsequentialist ethical theory and its connection with rationality, intuition, and sentiment. Her work has focused primarily on the puzzles surrounding deontological constraints. In moral psychology, she has written on weakness of will and is currently focused on questions surrounding one’s moral responsibility for their emotions, both felt and unfelt.

Selected publications

"In Defense of Vaccine Mandates: An Argument from Consent Rights” (with Daniel A. Wilkenfeld), Public Health Ethics, forthcoming

"Leaving Agent-Relative Value Behind” Utilitas, 2021, 33(1): 53-67

"How Deontologists Can Be Moderate” Journal of Value Inquiry, 2020, 54(2): 227-243

"Resolutions, salient reasons, and weakness of will” Synthese, 2019, 198(6): 5115-5138

"The Intrapersonal Paradox of Deontology” Journal of Moral Philosophy, 2019, 16(3), 279-301